"OUR ENEMY IS POLITICAL ISLAM, NOT EACH OTHER" - Jim DeMint / June 15, 2016 / http://dailysignal.com/2016/06/15/our-enemy-is-political-islam-not-each-other/ [AS I SEE IT: As the title of this article declares, America is at war with the political aspects of Islam, not the religious. There is a distinction, though we also cannot be blind to the fact that the fundamental teachings of Islam - the religion - feed the political objectives of Islam - a worldwide Islamic state . - Stan]
We know what inspired this crime: Islamist terrorism, fueled by propaganda from ISIS. (Photo: Balkis Press/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Around 2 a.m. Sunday morning, a 29-year-old man named Omar Mateen walked into a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people, wounding 53 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Mateen was an American-born Muslim and the son of Afghan immigrants.
In the following days, we’ve seen the usual cottage industry of controversy spring up around the atrocity: a wealth of commentary from politicians and pundits, and even the president, about whose political enemy is really to blame.
The first thing we should do is leave partisan politics aside. We know what inspired this crime: Islamist terrorism, fueled by propaganda from ISIS and other murderous groups in the Middle East. Mateen even called 911 to publicly pledge allegiance to ISIS. America’s fight is against political Islam.
Also, apart from being tasteless in the wake of a tragedy, political goalkeeping won’t help determine if there were any gaps in our intelligence and law enforcement networks that let such a despicable killer carry out his plans.
Hindsight is 20/20, but so far, we know a few things: A former coworker at a GS4 Security, a company which once employed Mateen, claims that Mateen made bigoted remarks about race and sexuality, spoke of committing violent acts, and harassed him with floods of text messages. He also claims that these warnings were ignored because of political correctness.
We also know that Mateen was actually once on a terrorist watch list, then taken off of it. The FBI interviewed him twice, in 2013 and 2014, because of his stated sympathies with Islamist extremists and contacts with an American who later died in a suicide bombing in Syria. We know that he took trips to Saudi Arabia in 2011 and 2012, although we don’t know what he was doing there.
It is impossible to predict every individual’s actions. But amidst the political back and forth in the coming days, I hope our leaders will keep their eye on the ball, and ask how we can improve our response to Islamist extremism at home and abroad, and the murderous people it has often inspired.
Our capability to tackle potential terrorists before they strike is all the more important because their numbers appear to be growing, not diminishing. As national security expert James Carafano reports:"In the U.S. the number and frequency of Islamist plots has been growing. Before Orlando, the U.S. alone has been the target of at least 85 Islamist-related terrorist plots since Sept. 11, 2001. The attack in Orlando is the 22nd plot since 2015. To put this increase in perspective, more than a quarter of domestic terror plots in the U.S. since 2001 have occurred in the last 18 months.
![150613_terror-plots_fb[1]](http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/150613_terror-plots_fb1-1024x1024.png)
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the numbers show that the incidence of terrorist plots is now increasing 15 years after the worst one we’ve ever faced. Whatever our government is doing, it hasn’t lessened the threat of Islamist extremism, whether at home or abroad. Just look to the tragic bloodshed in France at the Charlie Hebdo office and at the Bataclan Theater last year. The Heritage Foundation has long warned that the administration’s counterterrorism actions haven’t been sufficient, and has laid out a comprehensive path forward.
Along with millions of our fellow Americans, my prayers are with the victims of this terrorist attack and their families. And, along with those many millions, I’m looking forward to a national conversation about improving our national security to find and stop Islamist terrorists before they attack again.
[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]
Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint rose from modest South Carolina roots and a career in marketing to build and lead a resurgent conservative movement.
"‘Radical Islam’ Does Matter in Identifying Enemy, Experts Say" - Fred Lucas / June 16, 2016;
http://dailysignal.com/2016/06/16/radical-islam-does-matter-in-identifying-enemy-experts-say/ "...Islamism is a political ideology and it has to be taken on,” Lohman continued in the email. “If we physically dissuade terrorists from hurting people, we still have to stop Islamists from coercing people into their way of thinking by other means. Actually identifying the ideology is key to that, and unfortunately, that ideology is cast in religious terms. It’s like a Muslim civil society leader in Indonesia told me one time talking about the much more serious threat in her own country, ‘What difference does it make whether they are terrorists or not. They (Islamists) all want the same thing.’” ...
“A label may seem superficial. American soldiers in Normandy didn’t care whether they were fighting Germans or Nazis,” Carafano told The Daily Signal. “The real fear is that the president is not prosecuting the war to win. It’s horrible to imply using the word ‘Islam’ is racist. ‘Radical Islam’ refers to an Islamist ideology, and is by definition a distinction from Islam.”
We know what inspired this crime: Islamist terrorism, fueled by propaganda from ISIS. (Photo: Balkis Press/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Around 2 a.m. Sunday morning, a 29-year-old man named Omar Mateen walked into a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people, wounding 53 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Mateen was an American-born Muslim and the son of Afghan immigrants.
In the following days, we’ve seen the usual cottage industry of controversy spring up around the atrocity: a wealth of commentary from politicians and pundits, and even the president, about whose political enemy is really to blame.
The first thing we should do is leave partisan politics aside. We know what inspired this crime: Islamist terrorism, fueled by propaganda from ISIS and other murderous groups in the Middle East. Mateen even called 911 to publicly pledge allegiance to ISIS. America’s fight is against political Islam.
Also, apart from being tasteless in the wake of a tragedy, political goalkeeping won’t help determine if there were any gaps in our intelligence and law enforcement networks that let such a despicable killer carry out his plans.
Hindsight is 20/20, but so far, we know a few things: A former coworker at a GS4 Security, a company which once employed Mateen, claims that Mateen made bigoted remarks about race and sexuality, spoke of committing violent acts, and harassed him with floods of text messages. He also claims that these warnings were ignored because of political correctness.
We also know that Mateen was actually once on a terrorist watch list, then taken off of it. The FBI interviewed him twice, in 2013 and 2014, because of his stated sympathies with Islamist extremists and contacts with an American who later died in a suicide bombing in Syria. We know that he took trips to Saudi Arabia in 2011 and 2012, although we don’t know what he was doing there.
It is impossible to predict every individual’s actions. But amidst the political back and forth in the coming days, I hope our leaders will keep their eye on the ball, and ask how we can improve our response to Islamist extremism at home and abroad, and the murderous people it has often inspired.
Our capability to tackle potential terrorists before they strike is all the more important because their numbers appear to be growing, not diminishing. As national security expert James Carafano reports:"In the U.S. the number and frequency of Islamist plots has been growing. Before Orlando, the U.S. alone has been the target of at least 85 Islamist-related terrorist plots since Sept. 11, 2001. The attack in Orlando is the 22nd plot since 2015. To put this increase in perspective, more than a quarter of domestic terror plots in the U.S. since 2001 have occurred in the last 18 months.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the numbers show that the incidence of terrorist plots is now increasing 15 years after the worst one we’ve ever faced. Whatever our government is doing, it hasn’t lessened the threat of Islamist extremism, whether at home or abroad. Just look to the tragic bloodshed in France at the Charlie Hebdo office and at the Bataclan Theater last year. The Heritage Foundation has long warned that the administration’s counterterrorism actions haven’t been sufficient, and has laid out a comprehensive path forward.
Along with millions of our fellow Americans, my prayers are with the victims of this terrorist attack and their families. And, along with those many millions, I’m looking forward to a national conversation about improving our national security to find and stop Islamist terrorists before they attack again.
[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]
Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint rose from modest South Carolina roots and a career in marketing to build and lead a resurgent conservative movement.
"‘Radical Islam’ Does Matter in Identifying Enemy, Experts Say" - Fred Lucas / June 16, 2016;
http://dailysignal.com/2016/06/16/radical-islam-does-matter-in-identifying-enemy-experts-say/ "...Islamism is a political ideology and it has to be taken on,” Lohman continued in the email. “If we physically dissuade terrorists from hurting people, we still have to stop Islamists from coercing people into their way of thinking by other means. Actually identifying the ideology is key to that, and unfortunately, that ideology is cast in religious terms. It’s like a Muslim civil society leader in Indonesia told me one time talking about the much more serious threat in her own country, ‘What difference does it make whether they are terrorists or not. They (Islamists) all want the same thing.’” ...
“A label may seem superficial. American soldiers in Normandy didn’t care whether they were fighting Germans or Nazis,” Carafano told The Daily Signal. “The real fear is that the president is not prosecuting the war to win. It’s horrible to imply using the word ‘Islam’ is racist. ‘Radical Islam’ refers to an Islamist ideology, and is by definition a distinction from Islam.”
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