by Jack Lee
Perhaps you heard about the murders in France recently? It was a horrific attack, totally senseless, aimed at school children and their teachers. It happened at about 8 a.m. last Monday just as the kids were about to begin their school day in in the French city of Toulouse.
Seven people were shot dead including 3 small children. It was Jewish school and police feared it might have been a Muslim terrorist, but they dared not say it. So when pressed for an answer they suggested it might be the work of neo-nazi’s. But, as the investigation continued it became clear to everyone… it wasn’t.
As this story is being written, the gunman has been cornered and is hold up inside an apartment building. He is a 24 year old French Muslim of Algerian descent and he claims to be a member of Al Qaeda.
In 2005 bombings shattered the quiet of London. They were conducted by four separate Islamic extremist suicide bombers. Two of them were professional people, a medical doctor and an engineer, and they killed 56 people and injured over 700. Twice in 2007 England was hit by Muslim terrorists and again in 2008. The suspects were all naturalized citizens and they were devoutly Muslim. There have been a total of 10 prevented attacks during the period from 2005 till the present.
In the United States we have foiled no less than 45 terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11. Other attackers succeeded, they were almost all Americans and they were almost all of a classic profile: Young men 18-28, with close ties to Islamic nations, and they were Muslims, but we’re not supposed to notice…that would be wrong. Here’s a list of those arrested or killed: Abdullah al-Muhajir, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, John A Muhammad, Iyman Faris, Dhiren Barot (AKA Abu Issa al-Hindi, Shahawar Matin Siraj, James Elshafay, Hammad Samana, Kevin James, Levar Washington, Gregory Patterson, the latter 4 were part of the extremist group, Jamiyyat Ul-Islam. Michael C. Reynolds, a mercenary who was paid $40k by Al Qeada to attack an oil refinery. Then there were terrorist recruiters like Khaleel Ahmed, his cousin Zubair Ahmed, Zand Mazloum, Marwan El-Hindi, and Mohammad Amawi. Ehsanul Sadequee and Syed Ahmed were part of the Toronto 17 bent waging jihad in Canada and the US. Mohammed Taheri-azar plead guilty to 9 counts of 1st degree murder in North Carolina. Narseal Batiste, as well as Patrick Abraham, Stanley Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lygnelson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustin were actively soliciting weapons from Al Qaeda for an attack on the Sears Tower. They were part of the “Islamic Army” and determined to wage Jihad inside the US. Assem Hammoud was busted with a backpack bomb, he was headed for a New York subway tunnel. Sulejman Talovic, a Serbian-American cut down 5 Americans in Salt Lake before he was killed, his dying words…Allah U-Akbar! Then there was a group of about 15 Muslims from various countries who conspired to attack Fort Dix and also jet fuel tanks at JFK, sorry I don’t have their names handy. Then there was the Fort Hood shootings by Army Capt. Nidal Hasan, this single gunman killed 13 people and wounded 29 others. Just before the shootings he received permission from Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who said it was his Islamic duty to wage war against the US Army. al-Awlaki was born in Denver. He was recently killed in Yemen with other Islamic terrorists.
Army Capt. Hasan conspired with an enemy of America, a global terrorist and he carried out a deadly attack against the US, and by all rules of law he is then guilty of treason, but he is not being charged with treason, because of…because of what, it’s not politically correct? It’s an election year? What’s the reason?
(Sandler family on right were shot dead at point blank range) Now, a single gunman, Mohammed Merah, 23, is cornered in a house in Toulouse,
France. A police raid discovered explosives in his brothers car and his brother is now in custody. Mohammed Merah is linked to the deaths at the Jewish school and he is a suspect in the ambush killing of 3 French soldiers several days earlier. The shootings occurred at two locations near Toulouse. One of those killed at the school was the 7 year old daughter of the school’s principal.
The whole world is horrified by the latest senseless brutality and evil of the attack on children in school.
My question is, is this all going lead us to some inevitable end, without even acknowledging the obvious or shall we stay in denial? And what should we do…if anything? I have no answer – do you?
PS French police say they have arrested 914 suspected Islamist militants since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and imprisoned 224, averting several planned attacks.
Are you asking is it time to asses the risk at home, Jack? Or the risk in the ME? I think as we have all acknowledged, in various ways, it is time to asses both. I have considered that it is the shift to attacks in the western contries that has prompted the expansion of the Patriot Act and the new fascility in Utah. It makes us all uncomfortable but so do mass murders and attacks like those described above or the thought a cyber attack and the destruction of our economy.
The advantage terrorists have is that they keep shifting. We need to discvover their greatest weakness and use it against them…it would take minds with more experience, knowledge and savy than I possess. I have to pray for good leadership and support for those who are tasked with keeping us safe…it’s an incredible responsibility.
Great report Jack.
But you do want to talk about the latest jihadi.
Always them, never us. Always the nefarious other.
Lacks humility, that’s what it does.
Here is a link I got from a friend on my Facebook. It goes to a liberal blog, which made this cartoon even funnier to me because they are finally waking up to the theft of our civil liberties from the corrupt Obama/Holder DOJ and how this war has allowed them to shred the constitution in the name of “terrorism”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/21/1076105/-New-due-process
Libby, there was a time when you might have gotten away with that kind of thinking. But, when Muslims in countries scattered around the world go around killing folks, some of them their neighbors, some of them children, and for no other reason than they aren’t one of them…then your demand that we take stock of our personal transgressions before criticizing them for wanting to murder us looks pretty silly. It’s not about humility, its about understanding your enemy, which you obviously don’t.
Thanks Tina. I was asking if it isn’t time re-assess who we are letting in this country and maybe we should be more selective? I don’t see how allowing several million people to come here, live separate from us, not share our democratic values and harbor ill will, is helpful. When that same culture tends side with those who are destructive and violent it becomes all the worse.
Its just a guess, but I would say that at least 40%-50% of all Muslims living here have some sympathy for jihadists and harbor some degree of animosity towards America. That can’t be good for anyone.
We’ve seen countless examples of angry Muslims protesting here, denouncing our values and mocking our freedoms. On the other side, we’ve seen very few come forward trying to stand up for American and condemn terrorism.
I don’t know how we can continue to avoid this sensitive issue and expect a good outcome? Most British citizens wish they had never allowed so many of the radicalized North African Muslims into their country. They have paid a high price for that outreach of friendship and now they are in a major dilemma what to do about it….same goes for the French.
During WWII we were freaked out because 6 saboteurs slipped ashore from a German sub…I wonder how would that have worked out for us if it were 1000 or 2000 saboteurs? There is a risk right now and why we’re not looking at it is troubling. It seems like we’ve substituted common sense for political correctness.
Libby: “Always them, never us. Always the nefarious other.
Lacks humility, that’s what it does.”
What’s required?
Jack: “During WWII we were freaked out because 6 saboteurs slipped ashore from a German sub…I wonder how would that have worked out for us if it were 1000 or 2000 saboteurs? There is a risk right now and why we’re not looking at it is troubling. It seems like we’ve substituted common sense for political correctness.”
That’s how I’m feeling about the war generally. Is it that people just don’t like to distinguish between good and evil, freedom and oppression, or is it that we are expected to be understanding? It seems to me we have tried a lot of different things, kindness, diplomacy, aid, sanctions, war, support, investment and still we are the target of a mindset bent on our destruction.
I thought we should have closed the borders after 911 but the strength we were supposedly showing at the time was that we are a strong free and open society.
I did hear about a Muslim gentleman in New York a week or so ago who spoke out about cooperating with police and saying that the Muslim community should know the police are there to help them. I think NY has been threatened quite recently so I imagine the authorities have been on higher alert.
We are beginning to get a taste of what it’s like for the people in Israel who live with the constant possibility of terror threats.
I wish I had an answer. My magic wand doesn’t seem to be working.
Jack: “Its just a guess, but I would say that at least 40%-50% of all Muslims living here have some sympathy for jihadists and harbor some degree of animosity towards America. That can’t be good for anyone.”
Statements like these are so vague as to be meaningless. What do you mean by “some sympathy for jihadists?” What do you mean by “some degree of animosity towards America?”
“We’ve seen countless examples of angry Muslims protesting here, denouncing our values and mocking our freedoms.”
So countless that you couldn’t even bother to name one. This is another vague and meaningless statement. What Muslim protests have occurred in the United States which have “denounced our values?” What Muslim protest has occurred in the U.S. which “mocked our freedoms?” I honestly can’t think of any such protests that have occurred here in the U.S., but since you’re not defining what you mean, you could be talking about anything.
“On the other side, we’ve seen very few come forward trying to stand up for American and condemn terrorism.”
Nonsense. This is exactly what Imam Rauf does all the time. George Bush used to send him to foreign countries to do exactly this. And when he decided to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero, you and many other conservatives flipped out and accused him, with zero evidence, of being at best anti-American and at worst a terrorist sympathizer, when in fact he has spent his entire career preaching moderation and reform in Islam and explicitly rejecting terrorism. Rauf is perhaps the most prominent Islamic voice against terrorism in the United States, and you tried to shout him down with lies and false accusations.
On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh actually defended a brutal terrorist group over our military on national radio, and you didn’t make a peep. Tina defended it as a silly mistake that couldn’t possible have any real impact, despite the fact that many of Rush’s listeners were convinced that he was right, and that Obama really was sending soldiers to “wipe out Christians” in Uganda. James Inhofe had to correct this on the congressional record because he said he got so many phone calls from concerned, misinformed citizens about it. Most other Republicans had nothing to say about this instance of terrorist sympathy from their de facto leader. Nor did they have much to say about Rep. Peter King’s longtime support for the terrorist group known as the IRA, even though he had the gall to hold a hearing accusing others of holding terrorist sympathies. But you sure didn’t mind falsely accusing Imam Rauf of being a terrorist sympathizer based on nothing but his religion and his proximity to a site where the hijackers of said religion killed thousands, including many Muslims.
It is very hard to take seriously your insistence that you are not anti-Muslim when you try and turn even the most moderate and progressive Muslims into stereotypes. Recently you also made false accusations against a Muslim woman who was quoted in a news story, because you blatantly misinterpreted what she said and failed to provide the full context of her words to your readers. You also implied that she would one day be a victim of domestic abuse based on nothing but her religion. That is bigotry by definition. I have asked you several times to correct the record and apologize for your vicious smears against this private citizen, but every time I’ve asked you have decided that you didn’t need to. This is enough to make any rational person question your motives.
http://volokh.com/2011/08/30/non-extremist-american-muslims-worried-about-extremism-among-american-muslims/
The following represents a portion of a survey conducted in the Muslim community. Five favorable points are made about Muslims in America and are followed by:
Thanks for posting that, Tina. I find the Volokh Conspiracy very informative, even though I don’t always agree with all of the bloggers’ conclusions.
Thanks for that polling Tina, it is pretty close to what I believed more or less intuitively. Only 34% say leaders have done enough. I’ll bet outside their community 95% of us would say their leaders have not done enough.
Chris..it’s not vague and it’s not meaningless. It’s just my opinion, not a white paper on terrorism. I stated my opinion quite clearly and it means a lot to me.
Tina has some polling stats that tend to support we have a pending problem…do you deny we have a problem pending?
Tina, apparently we need more humility to avoid being targets of terrorism…least thats what I think Libs said.
Chris: “On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh actually defended a brutal terrorist group over our military on national radio, and you didn’t make a peep. Tina defended it as a silly mistake that couldn’t possible have any real impact, despite the fact that many of Rush’s listeners were convinced that he was right…”
A. Rush Limbaugh opened his program with a story (AP?) from which he was reading. The opening paragraph did not make clear that the group (with the word Christian in the name) was a terror organization, only that Obama was sending troops against them or to support locals against them. He should have read further before opening the show. He noticed the error emediately, acknowledged the error, made reference to due diligence (was he admonishing staff that is PAID to revue) and clearly, by my estimation, said they werew not a good Christian organization.
B) Chris’s characterization of this one time event makes it sound like Rush went on for days making false statements about the preasident and maligning our troops. I can’t imagine why except that Chris has a very noticable distaste for the man and has a need to bring it up every chance he gets.
C. Tiuna didn’t “make a peep” because Tina didn’t take offense at what was an honest mistake, acknowledged and dropped.
D. Chris has not shown us any evidence that this incident, which lasted probably less than a minute or two and no more (possibly less), has has “any real impact” nor has he shown us any evidence that “many of Rush’s listeners were convinced that he was right” which he stated was a “fact”.
His only evidence is the phone calls he reports were received by Senator James Inhofe who had to “correct the congressional record”. Why it had to be corrected on the Congressional record is a mystery to me since Rush’s comments wouldn’t appear in the Congressional record unless put there by someone. The callers in question could easlily be Democrat operatives (media matters, moveon.org) who were interested in adding it to the Congressional record or correcting the Congressional record after a speech made on the floor by a Democrat Senator alluding to Rush’s comments. Other than that I find it difficult to believe that Rush’s millions of listeners have been interviewed by Chris so I find his incessant tirade and accusation dishonest.
“Most other Republicans had nothing to say about this instance of terrorist sympathy from their de facto leader…”
Meaningless talking point…Rush is a guy on the radio with many supporters, some in politics and government, most NOT! He isn’t a “defacto” anything; he’s a guy expressing his opinions about the events of the day and politics. Geeesh!
“Nor did they have much to say about Rep. Peter King’s longtime support for the terrorist group known as the IRA…”
I frankly didn’t know much about his involvement; he wasn’t in the Senate at the time and I lived in California not New York. You brought this up to dicredit his current work against terrorism but you don’t have all of the facts…mostly you have attitude.
There’s a very good article in the NY Sun that gives a history of his involvement and his American supporters and detractors. Authorities in the 1980’s in America and England were very much aware of his support and did not support him:
http://www.nysun.com/national/rep-king-and-the-ira-the-end-of-an-extraordinary/15853/
Hmmm…British Imperializm! Isn’t “Imperialism” one of the thinga railed against by OWS and antiwar freaks? But there’s more…
You should read the entire article it’s quite fascinating and, by the way, talks about Kings conversion as a supporter of the IRA.
” But you sure didn’t mind falsely accusing Imam Rauf of being a terrorist sympathizer…”
If I, or Jack, actually made that accusation I’d be surprised. My recollection is that I had doubts and suspicions based on duplicitous statements but was basically undecided.
“…based on nothing but his religion and his proximity to a site where the hijackers of said religion killed thousands, including many Muslims.”
Your memory is selective. I showed you statements he made and why I thought they were drivel. I showed youthat his book title in the ME was very different from the one chosen for American consumption. I also showed you a comparison of his statements against those of another Muslim that clearly showed that Muslim’s love of America and American values where Rauf’s do not. Rauf does not speak forthrightly. In short I don’t trust the man. I’m pretty sure that’s still okay in America…forming an opinion.
Jack I thought she was saying that unless we spend an equal amount of timemaking positive comments about the Muslim community and admitting that American is also evil we have no humility. Only Libby knows for sure and so far she ain’t posting!