Tag Archives: Islamic jihad

It’s time for U.S. to deal with “Jihadist” abuse

26 Dec

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

12.26.15

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The Muslim world is rampant with cultural pathologies that keep it living largely in the mean and barbaric world of the 7th Century Arab peninsula. Common sense says that Western, civilized nations will look askance at that world, and view them with suspicion, and natural fear, and a sense of self preservation.  We do not fear the Muslim world because they look, speak, or believe differently. We do so because they demonstrably generate people who try, often successfully, to kill us because we look, speak, or believe differently. Fearing this is a sensible thing to do. Defending against it is a sensible thing to do.

Rational people begin to question why leaders continue to assure them of things they know to be wrong. They wonder why they tell them not to fear that which they know to be fearful, and trust that which they know to be undependable.

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I think one answer may be that Islamists are analogous to abusive men, and their apologists play the role of the battered woman. He didn’t really mean to hit me.

(They don’t really want to blow us up, they love peace.)

 

It was my fault. I started it. I told him that he needed to get a job and stop drinking.

(It was our fault. I started it. We locked up some of the murderers and noted the fact that such murderers seem, overwhelmingly to issue forth from one group of people. We said stuff they don’t like. Of Course they would want to murder us in return.)

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He’s really sorry.  He’s being so nice now. I have to forgive him or he’ll get mad again.

(CAIR regrets that people died. Muslims are really worried that we will get made and hurt their feelings.)

 

All I have to do is figure out how to change so that I never do anything to set him off. .  I know if I’m nicer to him, he won’t hit me again.

(All we have to do is do everything exactly like they do, and we won’t set them off.)

 

Reality check?

Abusive men will beat and assault the women in their lives many times before they report it. They will finally either kill her, unless she finally manages to escape.

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The cycle repeats over and over, building tension, violence, contrition and affection.  Finally the learned actions no longer work.  Avoiding the things that set him off don’t matter: he will still beat her. Giving him what he wants always, being properly submissive no longer works: He will still beat her.

And in dealing with Islamism, they attack and murder over and over. They plan, prepare, attack, then we hear how the big fear is not the attackers murdering us, but the victims over reacting. No matter what the West does, it is not enough, and leads to more attacks. Many try to deny it, or excuse it, but still they beat their victims.  (Is it totally coincidental that in Islamist countries women are beaten regularly, legally, and often fatally?)

The abusive man does not cease to abuse because of what his wife or girlfriend does to change him.  He stops because either he gets help for his issues, he kills her, she kills him, or he is shot by police.

Or:

She finally manages to overcome her learned helplessness and escapes to a shelter. She finds protection from someone stronger.

For the abusers of Islamism, their victims have limited escape: the West. Most notably, the US.

They can gain safety because the US military, like the police, will react with outrage to atrocious acts. The US, like right thinking people, will defend their victims, and kill murderers until they are unable or unwilling to murder any more.

Unless the US becomes the battered victim.

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It is time to remember that we are strong. It is time to stop being the helpless victim, trying desperately to placate the one who beats us at a whim, and at will.

It is time to remember that we are still, for the moment, the biggest dog on the porch. And that biting our tail, or stealing our food, is a terrible mistake.

 

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Mark Caserta: US must ramp up campaign against ISIS

20 Jun

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Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor

Jun. 18, 2015 @ 12:01 AM

The world has now sustained months of unrelenting atrocities by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). We’ve witnessed barbaric beheadings, victims burned alive and a strategic cleansing of Christians refusing to embrace the Muslim religion. Yet, the president of the United States still lacks a strategy to defeat them.

Last week, in a news conference following the Group of 7 summit meeting in Germany, Obama admitted to the world that “we don’t have, yet, a complete strategy” for addressing the threat posed by ISIS. He claims that after nearly a year and a half of the United States and its allies grappling with this group of Islamic terrorists, “the details are not worked out.”

The president’s failure to recognize ISIS as a grave threat early on certainly hampered strategies to squelch their advances. Some may recall that in January 2014 Obama compared ISIS to a “junior varsity basketball team,” playing down the strengths of ISIS, compared with Al Qaeda.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a J.V. team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Mr. Obama told David Remnick of The New Yorker. That same month, ISIS seized Fallujah, a city in Anbar Province, Iraq, and parts of Ramadi, the province’s capital.

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A few months later, as the military prowess of the group became known, the president was questioned about his strategy for addressing the threat that he dramatically understated. Yet he still lacked urgency.

The president has been clear as to what his strategy won’t be!

“I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” Obama told reporters. “American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no military solution to the larger crisis there.”

So, the president claims he can defeat ISIS with coalition air power. But a recent Wall Street Journal article reveals the Obama coalition’s air campaign against ISIS pales in comparison to strategic air campaigns waged by presidents since the end of the Cold War, which were deemed successful.

During the 43-day Desert Storm air campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1991, coalition planes flew 48,224 strike sorties, or roughly 1,100 a day. 12 years later, the 31-day Iraqi Freedom campaign averaged more than 800 sorties a day. But the Obama “campaign” against ISIS, now approaching nine months, has only averaged about seven sorties a day! With ISIS now in control of an area around 50,000 square miles, it’s easy to see why these efforts haven’t been effective.

If indeed, Obama plans to decimate ISIS with coalition air power, he should take the lead in increasing the number of strikes commensurate with prior successful air campaigns.

And despite how much we dislike the thought, we must have sufficient ground troops to facilitate coordinated surgical strikes against the enemy.

Protecting America must take precedent over protecting Obama’s legacy.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Mark Caserta: Congress must unite to protect America

5 Mar

Who will stop Barack Hussein Obama?

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FSP EDITOR, MARK CASERTA

Mar. 05, 2015 @ 12:01 AM

President Obama made a remarkable statement in his sixth State of the Union address to the nation and a joint session of Congress – one which should have all Americans scratching their heads.

“America, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed.”

Could Obama really be that out of touch with reality?

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Later in the speech he added, “Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and begun again the work of remaking America. We have laid a new foundation.”

Our Founding Fathers provided us with an enduring foundation – the U.S Constitution. And brave men and women have given their lives through the years to preserve, protect and uphold this deed to freedom. America does not need to be “remade” by Barack Obama.

Hidden within the president’s own words lies what I believe to be the defining aspiration of Obama’s presidency. Every builder understands before laying a new foundation, the old one must be unearthed and deconstructed. All around us, the foundational principles of the United States of America are being dismantled by this administration’s policies.

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An in-depth look at Obama’s life mentors helps explain his apparent ideological distaste for America.

Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor of 20 years, was someone he equated to an “old uncle.” Known for his proliferation of black liberation theology, Wright encouraged blacks to damn America in God’s name in 2003. Obama entitled one of his books, “The Audacity of Hope” after one of Wright’s sermons.

In Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father,” he writes about “a poet named Frank” who visited his family in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of “hard-earned knowledge” and advice. This childhood mentor, mentioned at least 22 times in the book, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party named Frank Marshall Davis. All references to “Frank” were removed from the audio version years later.

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And then there’s Obama’s longtime friend, left-wing radical Bill Ayers, who continues to defend the series of anti-Vietnam bombings he carried out as a member of the Weather Underground. A 1995 fundraiser which helped initiate the political career of Barack Obama was reportedly held in Ayer’s living room.

Why revisit history now? America is no longer at a crossroads; we’ve taken a hard left turn toward disaster.

According to several news reports, this administration is offering a pact to Iran which eases restrictions on its nuclear program in several phases over the next decade, paving the way for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. And, once again, Obama intends to bypass Congress in lieu of executive privilege.

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This president simply lacks the qualifications to single-handedly barter a deal with a rogue nation like Iran, one that threatens to bring about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East while alienating our ally, Israel.

It’s truly time for Democrats and Republicans alike to unite against Barack Obama and thwart his mission to remake America.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a

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Mark Caserta: Muslim outcry over terrorism is missing

27 Feb

…even from our own president.

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FSP EDITORIAL

Feb. 26, 2015 @ 12:01 AM

Civilized nations around the world are mourning the loss of 21 Egyptian Christians, ruthlessly murdered last week by the Islamic terrorist group, ISIS.

The brutal act, a “mass” beheading of “Copts,” an Orthodox Christian minority dating back to the first century church, was aimed directly at the Christian faith. The entire five-minute-long massacre which was videotaped and posted online, was entitled “A Message Signed With Blood, To The Nation of the Cross.”

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The gruesome film emblazoned the severed heads sadistically set atop the victims’ backs. An ISIS jihadist dressed in military fatigues spoke with American-accented English as he pronounced, “All praise is due to Allah, the strong and mighty. And may blessings and peace be upon the ones sent by the sword as a mercy to all the worlds.”

I found this vile message of “blessings and peace” to be sickening and inexorably spewed from the mouth of a demented, Islamic deviant who inhumanely values the glory of death over the condition of life. Surely such an act of terror, in the name of Allah, would be rigorously condemned by those following the Muslim “religion of peace.”

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But few supporters of the Muslim faith have stepped out to denounce the barbarism of Islamic terrorism and rightfully recognize it as a “religious war” being waged by radical Islamic extremists – including President Obama.

However, Reverend Franklin Graham, a Christian, was quick to decry the horrific act and provide some austere perspective to the incident.

“Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians?” Franklin asked. “Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world? As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States.”

He added the grave warning, “The storm is coming.” And I believe the reverend is right.

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A number of recent reports indicate there are already a number of Islamic terrorist “sleeper cells” within the United States spread out across the country. Intelligence reports from Egypt, a nation now at the forefront in fighting ISIS, indicate global jihadist groups are planning a worldwide offensive this spring or summer that could reach targets within the U.S.

One would think that the reality of another Islamic terror attack on the U.S. would spur some sober thought and deliberate action from the Obama administration. But all Americans are seeing is a president who apparently values the sanctity of the Muslim faith over protecting Americans from Islamic militants who value their religion over the lives of those who don’t.

And progressives, like Obama, attempting to “level the killing fields” through a superfluous comparison of burnings and beheadings to other periods of bloodshed throughout history, serves absolutely no purpose in protecting the U.S. and is sanctimonious and naive at best.

How can we ever hope to defeat an enemy that we refuse to recognize?

Yes, there is a storm coming. And President Obama should be leading America as commander-in-chief, not an Islamic apologist.

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Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Mark Caserta: Obama’s denial emboldens terrorists

12 Feb
 Why will this president go to any length to protect the Islamic religion?
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FSP Editorial
Feb. 12, 2015 @ 12:01 AM

Displaying a level of brutality, shocking even by the standards of the previous horrific murders committed by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, First Lieutenant Muath al Kaseasbeh, a Jordanian pilot, was recently burned alive inside a locked cage in the name of radical Islam. The barbarous act, which shocked the world, clearly defined the group’s willingness to viciously propagate the violent extremism of the Islamic State.

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But two days later, rather than simply condemn the act as a violent display of Islamic terrorism, Barack Hussein Obama used the bully pulpit at the National Prayer breakfast to persuade the world that violence rooted in religion isn’t exclusive to Islam, but has been carried out by Christians as well. In fact, he compared the ISIS atrocity to violent acts committed by Christians in the Crusades. He also said Christ was used as justification for slavery and radical discrimination in the United States.

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” the president said.

The comments were considered outrageous to many.

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“The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, a Republican. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

Catholic League’s Bill Donohue says Obama should apologize for using the Crusades as an example of “terrible acts” by Christians, saying the crusades fought against Islamic jihad.

“The president should apologize for his insulting comparison,” Donohue said. “Obama’s ignorance is astounding and his comparison is pernicious.”

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Now, this president has always dismissed the idea of American exceptionalism. And frankly, his decision over the past six years to have the White House avoid the term “radical Islam” has brought to question Obama’s loyalty to America and the foundational principles on which our great nation was built.

Yet, anyone honestly assessing terrorism can easily conclude that Islamic extremism is at the very heart of murder and destruction in the world today. In fact, according to the non-partisan website, The Religion of Peace, over the last 40 years there have been 74 attacks on American soil by Islamic terrorists resulting in the murder of thousands of innocent people. We just simply don’t see attacks of this magnitude in the name of any other religion.

Let’s be clear. Islamic terrorism is flourishing under this president’s rule. His purposeful choice not to properly identify our enemy is indeed emboldening their mission.

As Obama continues to reject the notion that America is in a religious war based on the fundamental beliefs of the Islamic State, American’s lives are increasingly being placed at risk.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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White House sets delayed anti-extremism summit

11 Jan

How about ‘first’ admitting there’s such a thing as Islamic terrorism…just saying…

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By JOSH GERSTEIN |

1/11/15 11:54 AM EST

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week, the White House has scheduled an anti-extremism conference that was originally set for last October but was postponed without explanation.

In a statement issued as many world leaders gathered in the French capital Sunday to express solidarity with France and to vow renewed efforts to fight violent Islamic radicalism, the White House announced that its summit on the issue of homegrown terrorism will take place next month.

“On February 18, 2015, the White House will host a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism to highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence, efforts made even more imperative in light of recent, tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson first announced the summit in September, as concern was growing about the threat posed by the Islamic State movement and by that group’s recruitment of fighters in the West. Johnson said the high-level meeting would take place the following month.

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However, it did not. In the lead-up to the midterm elections, White House spokesmen repeatedly refused to discuss the reason for the delay or even to confirm on the record that it had been postponed.

Last week’s shooting rampage at a satirical French weekly and hostage-takings at two other sites in Paris refocused attention on the danger of so-called homegrown extremists carrying out attacks far from the places in the Middle East and Africa where such violence is more common.

Earnest said Sunday that the conference would address efforts being taken in the U.S., as well as promoting cooperation with similar work abroad.

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“Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) efforts rely heavily on well-informed and resilient local communities.  Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis-St. Paul have taken the lead in building pilot frameworks integrating a range of social service providers, including education administrators, mental health professionals, and religious leaders, with law enforcement agencies to address violent extremism as part of the broader mandate of community safety and crime prevention,” he said.

“At the same time, our partners around the world are actively implementing programs to prevent violent extremism and foreign terrorist fighter recruitment.  The summit will include representatives from a number of partner nations, focusing on the themes of community engagement, religious leader engagement, and the role of the private sector and tech community,” the White House spokesman added.

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OBAMA’S PLAN IS FAILIING TO DEGRADE OR DESTROY ISIS.

12 Oct

WE ARE LOSING THE WAR ON RADICAL ISLAM

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America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

MILITARY AIR

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Mark Caserta: Islamic terrorism is a religious war

2 Oct

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Oct. 02, 2014 @ 06:55 AM

Radical Islamic terrorism is rapidly tightening its clutch on our American livelihood.

When I wrote last week on potential “lone wolf” attacks on American soil utilizing the barbaric methods we’ve witnessed during the rise of the Islamic State group, or ISIS, I had hoped it would never actually happen. But last week, in Moore, Oklahoma, the U.S. may have seen the beginning of our worst nightmare.

Officials with the Moore Police Department say the FBI is now involved in the investigation related to a brutal attack of workers at a food distribution plant. Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says the alleged suspect, 30-year-old Alton Nolen, a convert to Islam who now goes by “Jah’Keem Yisrael,” had just been fired when he returned to the plant’s front office area where he confronted 54-yearold Colleen Hufford and began attacking her with a knife, “severing her head.” “Ms. Hanford’s cause of death is decapitation due to multiple sharp force trauma to neck. Manner of death is homicide,” said Amy Elliott with the Medical Examiner’s Office.

While it’s unclear Nolen’s Islamic faith played a role in the attack, the FBI is now looking into reports that he tried to convert former co-workers to Islam while working at the facility. But certainly death by beheading has been proprietary to Islamic jihadists and leads one to believe that even if Nolen’s firing was the catalyst, his faith may have prompted this style killing.

No doubt, there are those who will attempt to describe this attack as simply an act of “workplace violence.” The Obama administration has been consistent in refusing to make the connection between terrorism and radical Islam. Following the Fort Hood shooting in 2009 when Nidal Malik Hasan shot dozens of soldiers in an admitted attempt to protect Taliban leaders in Afghanistan from American troops, the president refused to call the shooting an act of terror.

But failures during the Obama presidency, along with declining poll numbers, have forced the administration into admitting we are indeed at war with terror. But the White House is still unwilling to make the connection to radical Islam.

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Earlier this month in his address to the nation regarding the Islamic State, the president said, “Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim … ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple.” The “politically correct” notion that there is no connection between the actions of radical jihadists and their Islamic religion is dangerously naïve. We must recognize the tenacious mindset of Islamic extremism in order to clearly understand the threat.

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The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Muslim extremists have chosen to interpret their holy book’s call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions of justifiable violence. These individuals do not fear death – they celebrate it.

The president must forego his concern about protecting the Muslim religion and address Islamic terrorism as a religious war – one we cannot afford to lose.

Mark Caserta is a conserva tive blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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U.S. Confirms ISIS Planning Infiltration of U.S. Southern Border

10 Sep

 

President’s “strategy” may not be enough…

Militants from the al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) removing part of the soil barrier on the Iraq-Syria borders and moving through it / AP

Washington Free Beacon,

A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border.

Francis Taylor, under secretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, told senators during a hearing that ISIL supporters are known to be plotting ways to infiltrate the United States through the border.

“There have been Twitter, social media exchanges among ISIL adherents across the globe speaking about that as a possibility,” Taylor told Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) in response to a question about “recent reports on Twitter and Facebook of messages that would urge infiltration into the U.S. across our southwestern border.”

“Certainly any infiltration across our border would be a threat,” Taylor said, explaining that border security agents are working to tighten measures that would prevent this from taking place.

“I’m satisfied we have the intelligence and the capability on our border that would prevent that activity,” Taylor said.

However, McCain was dubious, referring to recent videos released by activist James O’Keefe showing him crossing the border while wearing an Osama bin Laden mask.

Asked by McCain why agents did not stop O’Keefe, Taylor could not provide an answer.

“You can’t answer it because they weren’t there to stop him,” McCain responded.

“The fact is there are thousands of people who are coming across our border who are undetected and not identified, and for you to sit there and tell me that we have the capability or now have the proper protections of our southwest border, particularly in light of the urgings over Facebook and Twitter [by ISIL] for people to come across our southwestern border, is a great concern to the citizens of my state.”

Taylor admitted that more must be done to shore up border security in light of ongoing threats.

“The security at the southwestern border is of great concern to the department and I certainly understand the concerns of the citizens of your state,” he told McCain. “If I gave you the impression I thought the border security was what it needed to be to protect against all the risks coming across the state that’s not what I meant to say.”

There is little evidence to prove that ISIL militants or other terror actors would be stopped if they attempt to cross the border, McCain said.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt, I don’t see when you look at ISIS and the growth and influence of ISIS that it would be logical [to claim they would be stopped], as they’re saying on Facebook and Twitter, to come across our southwest border because they can get across,” he said.

Other U.S. officials have warned ahead of President Obama’s speech this evening that ISIL is growing in strength and seeking the capability to attack America directly.

“We remain mindful of the possibility that an ISIL-sympathizer—perhaps motivated by online propaganda—could conduct a limited, self-directed attack here at home with no warning,” Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said in a recent speech.

“We have seen ISIL use a range of media to tout its military capabilities, executions of captured soldiers, and consecutive battlefield victories,” Olsen said. “More recently, the group’s supporters have sustained this momentum on social media by encouraging attacks in the U.S. and against U.S. interests in retaliation for our airstrikes. ISIL has used this propaganda campaign to draw foreign fighters to the group, including many from Western countries.”

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RADICAL ISLAMISTS IN SYRIA COULD BRING FIGHT TO U.S.

2 Sep

BY Yochi Dreazen

Yochi Dreazen is managing editor for news for Foreign Policy, overseeing a team of reporters covering national security, foreign policy, energy, diplomacy, and the global economy. He is also writer-in-residence at the Center for a New American Security, where he is working on a book about military suicide that will be published by Random House’s Crown division this October. The book, The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in the Era of Endless War, was the finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, jointly awarded by the Columbia Journalism School and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

 

 

Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum that the ranks of foreigners taking part in the war against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad now number at least 12,000, up from 7,000 a few months ago, including at least 1,000 Europeans and at least 100 Americans. Olsen said those estimates likely understate the actual numbers.

“The numbers are growing as the conflict there continues,” said Olsen, who has run the counterterrorism center for three years and is slated to step down later this year. “It remains a magnet for extremists around the world.”

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, speaking on the same panel, said the intensifying conflict in the Gaza Strip threatened to further “fuel” the ranks of foreign fighters inside Syria. “It may contribute to the number of individuals who feel that they want to become part of the fight, but not necessarily in Gaza,” Mueller said.

Neither conflict shows any signs of slowing. Last week included the bloodiest 48-hour period to date in the three-year-old Syrian civil war, with an NGO monitoring the conflict estimating that more than 700 Syrians were killed on Thursday and Friday. More than 170,000 people have died in the conflict since it began in March 2011. Elsewhere in the region, violence flared in the West Bank Friday for the first time since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in Gaza on July 8. At least five people were killed, pushing the Palestinian death toll to more 800. Israel has lost 35 people, including 33 soldiers.

For the moment, Syria poses the far greater threat to the United States. The Western fighters there on European and American passports could return home to carry out strikes far more easily than other militants could. Olsen said some of those 100 Americans have already come back to the United States, though he emphasized that the FBI is monitoring and tracking many of them.

The counterterrorism chief said that the U.S. intelligence community’s persistent difficulty in collecting detailed information about the fighting in Syria made it hard to trace the American and European militants once they made it to the battlefield.

Those challenges continue when the fighters return home. Olsen said it was difficult to identify and track those militants because they included both Syrians living in the United States and fighters from other ethnicities and nationalities. He said the Islamic State, which is leading the fighting in Syria, runs sophisticated English-language websites designed to help radicalize even larger numbers of Westerners and potentially convince them to join the battle.

Olsen said that once there, the militants would find a growing swath of territory inside both Syria and Iraq that is rapidly turning into a safe haven for militants interested in launching attacks both there and elsewhere in the world. He said there were senior al Qaeda leaders in Syria training foreign fighters and taking advantage of their ability to plan attacks elsewhere with little interference.

Syria, Olsen said, was providing safe havens that were starting “to be reminiscent of what we faced before 9/11 in Afghanistan.”

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