Islamism Series: The Two Jihads

Back in April of this year, local Philadelphia Bulletin writer Herb Denenberg pointed out that the War on Terror (or the 'contingency operation' or whatever other soft-sounding name the Obama administration wants to rename it today) needed to be fought on two fronts. Fail to fight battles aggressively on either front, and we are in danger of ultimately losing the entire war.

Denenberg opined that al Qaeda and other radical Islamist terror organizations and their sponsor states were fighting the war on those two fronts: the 'Explosive Jihad' being carried out by the terror organizations through bombings, beheadings, and other planned mass attacks and the 'Stealth Jihad' being carried out by the slow manipulation of populations, politicians, universities, and cultures.

That 'Explosive Jihad' has again blasted into the American news headlines in recent days with the FBI raids in the New York borough of Queens. The Feds uncovered the first proven al Qaeda cell operating on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks, and moved quickly to take them down with raids in New York and Denver. Complete plot details have not been released, but as reported in the New York Daily News, this was "the real deal" and not some informant-based action.

These raids follow on the heels of the May foiling of a major plot to bomb a pair of New York synagogues and then shoot down an airliner with a Stinger missile. That plot was foiled when the New York-area Joint Terrorism Task Force uncovered and infiltrated the scheme, and supplied it with phony plastic explosives. When the terrorists planted the fake bombs, the Feds moved in and made their arrests. The Daily News reported also that one of the suspects, Abdul Rahman, stated "I hate those motherfuckers, those fucking Jewish bastards. I would like to get a synagogue."

Meanwhile, on the "Stealth Jihad" front, the Wahhabists from Saudi Arabia continue to fund a variety of methods aimed at changing American attitudes and culture in favor of Islam. As reported in the online magazine Front Page: "..embedded deep within our system of higher education, including many of our most prestigious universities..the Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions with vast infusions of cash."

Wahabbism is one of the most radical and virulent strains of Islamism, the worst of the worst among radical Islamists. It hates Western religious tolerance, and advocates Islam taking over the entire world religiously, culturally, and politically. It has been estimated that the Arab Wahabbis have funded the vast majority of the mosques built here in the U.S. over the past few decades.

The Wahhabists make the mortgage payments on 80% of American mosques, according to Front Page, and have contributed approximately $70 billion dollars over the past three decades to fund anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda efforts, including the establishment of schools of Middle Eastern studies at major American universities accompanied by the infiltration of professorial positions in those programs that push an anti-Western message.

The attempted attacks and the efforts at manipulating our society from within and without are all part and parcel of what the radical Islamists see as 'the long war', the one of attrition that they will ultimately win by wearing down America's will to fight. They hurt us on many levels with physical attacks, such as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of 9/11, but it may be the emotional toll that such attacks take on us, combined with our inability to recognize the danger thanks to the cultural and educational softening, that ultimately prove our undoing.

The Washington Times has reported that "al Qaeda is looking to exploit weakness in U.S. border security" in order to carry out what their sources believe may be a massive biological attack. In a video presentation, a senior al Qaeda official states: "Four pounds of anthrax in a suitcase this big (shows moderate hand separation) carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there."

It has also been reported that al Qaeda has forged agreements with the notorious South American drug cartel Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, to smuggle thousands of the terrorist group's operatives across the U.S-Mexico border. MS-13 would be paid from $30-50,000 US dollars for each operative smuggled into our country.

Americans need to understand that just because the former mainstream media does not report on these continuing efforts by the radical Islamists to exterminate and overthrow our culture and our nation, that these efforts have ended. As Denenberg pointed out correctly, the battle cry of the Muslim Brotherhood, one shared by all radical Islamists, is this: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The fully intend to make this happen through the efforts of the Two Jihads.

Islamism Series: Farewell, War on Terror

R.I.P. Pvt. William Long (left)...
Did you notice in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world last week that President Obama did not use the word "terrorism"? Interesting in light of reports that some in the Obama administration no longer refer to actions against al-Qaida and the Taliban as the "war on terror," instead calling them an "overseas contingency operation." But why? What is the reasoning behind this?

Apparently, the president believes that in order to forge a "new start" with the Muslim world, America must spotlight the common ground between the two cultures. Emphasizing atrocities committed by terrorists under the banner of Islam obviously does not aid that strategy. So out with the war on terror, in with the spirit of cooperation.

Some conservatives find this appalling. They say it shows weakness on the part of Obama. I disagree. As long as the United States stays strong on the battlefields and in the security area, diplomatic euphemisms don't mean very much. Obama wants more friends in the Arab world, and he's willing to give Muslims a rhetorical break to get them.

That, of course, pleases the American left, and herein lies a problem. The liberal media are now actively downplaying Muslim terrorism, and that was vividly demonstrated last week when an American Muslim in Arkansas shot two soldiers. One of them, 24-year-old Pvt. William Long, was killed.

The cold-blooded murder of Long by Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Muhammad, was a shocking story. But if you were watching Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," you missed it, as Couric did not mention the murder. On ABC, Charles Gibson ignored the story, as well. On NBC, Brian Williams spent less than two minutes on the situation.

But the network news operations and most other national media enthusiastically covered the murder of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller by a pro-life zealot. According to a new study by the Pew Research group, Tiller's murder received 90 percent more news coverage than the crime against Long. Unbelievable.

It is flat-out wrong for the news media to under-report a story where an American Muslim guns down two American soldiers in a small Arkansas town. Just a few years ago, that kind of journalistic irresponsibility would have been severely criticized. But not now. Today, news reporting is a different story.

As has been well documented, the American media are now in the ideology business, and Obama has been a big beneficiary of that. Not only did most journalists vote for him, as the president recently pointed out, but the media actively aided his candidacy by providing him with favorable coverage. And that continues to this day.

The news media may believe they are helping Obama by avoiding the constant violence of Muslim terrorism, but the practice is putting all of us in danger. How many more Bledsoes are roaming around?

Good question. Unfortunately, you won't get an answer on the nightly news.

NOTE: This article is presented as a continuation of the "Islamism Series", all of the entries for which may be viewed by clicking in to that below label.

WRITTEN by Bill O'Reilly and published at Human Events on June 13th, 2009

Dick Cheney's Compelling Witness

An extraordinary scene played out Thursday with what amounted to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate between a popular sitting president and an unpopular former vice president. The former veep won, hands down.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute had been scheduled for weeks before President Obama quite obviously tried to drown out Mr. Cheney by speaking on the same topic beginning exactly two minutes before Mr. Cheney was scheduled to take the AEI podium. In his 50-minute jeremiad, Mr. Obama repeatedly took nasty shots at Mr. Cheney and the administration he served, questioning not just the preceding administration's judgment, but also its motives and integrity.

Against Mr. Obama's insults, rhetoric and studied poses at his teleprompter, the former vice president answered with forceful words married to an understated tone of utter seriousness, with no electronic aids.

Mr. Obama accused the Bush administration of jettisoning the principles of the Constitution "for expedience sake." He accused his critics of "political posturing." And he said that "our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford."

Mr. Cheney responded that neither values nor the law had been set aside. He said that carefully selected CIA agents had been "especially prepared to apply techniques within the boundaries of their training and the limits of the law. Torture was never permitted, and the methods were given careful, legal review before they were approved. Interrogators had authoritative guidance on the line between toughness and torture, and they knew to stay on the right side of it."

Those interrogations, Mr. Cheney said, "prevented the violent death of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." The former vice president complained, rightly, that memos about the interrogations that Mr. Obama released provided "less than half the truth" because they were "carefully redacted to leave out references to ... specific terrorist plots that were averted." Yet: "For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the methods of the questions, but not the content of the answers."

The chattering classes have been blasting Mr. Cheney for weeks for speaking out so forcefully on these issues on behalf of positions the chatterers say are deeply unpopular. However, they can't accuse him of self-serving ambition. As he noted, he spoke "as a private citizen - a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek."

The remarkable sight of such a harshly criticized former leader standing so unbowed brings to mind some words from poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Mr. Cheney is exhibiting "some sense of duty, something of a faith, some reverence for the laws ourselves have made ... some civic manhood firm against the crowd."

The crowd ought to heed Mr. Cheney and rally behind him. By defending our intelligence officers, he defended America.

WRITTEN as a Washington Times editorial on May 22nd, 2009

Obama-Dem Mistake #1

There are going to be many of them in the coming days, weeks, months and years (hopefully not too many years.) Major mistakes made by President Barack Obama, the Obama administration, and the Democratic Party power in the congress. Each one of them is going to need to be pointed out and explained. Any number of sources will take on that responsibility, and I am going to ensure that this blog covers the worst of these mistakes. The 'Obama-Dem Mistake #1' began this week with the order to close the prisoner holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, known as 'Gitmo'. For those who are unaware, Guantanamo Bay is located on the southeast edge of Cuba. In 1898, the U.S. established a naval base there, and the 1903 'Cuba-America Treaty' gave the U.S. a perpetual lease on this area. In 2002, three camps were established on the naval base for the detainment and interrogation of prisoners captured on the battlefields in the war on terrorism in the Middle East. There were no appropriate facilities that were acceptable from a security standpoint within the Middle East countries where these combatants were captured for their continued detainment. There was also no way that such individuals were going to be allowed on to U.S. mainland soil, subject to American laws, and allowed to have the American judicial system available to them as if they had the same rights as the average American citizen. These were people who were actively involved in a war against the United States and the entirety of western civilization. They have already been filtered out and it has been determined that there is a high probability that these detainees have particular intelligence or information of a sensitive nature going directly to the security of the United States and/or our troops. Many of them have also been trained to resist normal levels of questioning and usual interrogation methods. Gitmo was selected as a location where these individuals could be kept safe from everyday Americans, and where they could be controlled and interrogated outside the reach of the American legal system. Gitmo has been inappropriately characterized as a 'torture facility' by all of the usual liberal sources such as the ACLU. It is also seen as a linchpin in the overall war on terror, which the liberal community wants shut down. President Obama was elected by these folks, and one of his promises to them was that he would shut down Gitmo and put a halt to any alleged American torture practices. In one of his first acts, he has ordered that Gitmo shutdown to happen within a year, and has ordered that most interrogation be conducted pursuant to the Army field munual. In many cases our intelligence and military officials will now be more restricted when interrogating threats to our national security than are our nations police officers in interrogating common criminals. And as Gitmo is closed down, where will the detainees, all of whom are genuine threats to Americans, be sent? The first recourse will be to attempt returning them to their homelands. But as this has been tried in the past, these nations do not want and will not accept the individuals. Will these individuals simply be released on to the streets of the United States? The ones who do get accepted for return to their homelands, will they return to fighting America? These dangerous individuals are about to become some of the first pawns in the liberal Democrat game. Closing Gitmo and restricting our intel resources is the first mistake of the new Obama-Dem administration. We can only hope that the ultimate price paid is relatively small, and not something even more cataclysmic than the 9/11 attacks.