Islamic State Is Recruiting America’s ‘Jihadi Cool’ Crowd: Rep.Michael McCaul (R-TX-District 10 )….see note
http://online.wsj.com/articles/michael-mccall-islamic-state-is-recruiting-americas-jihadi-cool-crowd-1410478638?mod=Opinion_newsreel_10
Just for the record…,.Rep. McCaul gets a very negative rating from the Arab American institute:
•Rated -3 by AAI, indicating anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)
The threat from terrorists holding U.S. passports is rising, and the administration is still playing catch-up.
We heard Wednesday night from President Obama about his plan to combat the Islamic State abroad, but what we didn’t hear is his plan to combat violent Islamist extremism in the U.S.
Americans have been radicalized within our borders and drawn to this conflict in disturbing numbers. Late last month the State Department confirmed that an American was killed in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and the government is investigating a second American fatality in the same battle. Both were young men raised in Minnesota, and one was found with his U.S. passport.
Though citizens of at least 50 countries have joined the brutal terrorist group, the hundred or more Americans who have traveled to the region to join the fight are the ones who pose an exceptionally grave threat to national security. Armed with military training, combat experience and extremist connections, these battle-hardened Islamists are only a one-way flight from home.
U.S. authorities are working to track these individuals and prevent their return to America, and the international community is waking up to the need to roll back the ISIS sanctuary straddling Iraq and Syria. But the danger to the homeland cannot be eliminated or reduced to what President Obama called a “manageable problem” solely on a foreign battlefield. We must also wage a robust effort here at home to combat the violent Islamist ideology—the root of radicalization—by working with local communities to intervene when we see signs of it.
Several of our allies have recently announced new measures to tackle homegrown extremism. The United Kingdom, for example, is requiring suspected British jihadists to attend de-radicalization programs. But many of our partners ultimately look to the U.S. for guidance. So what is America doing to combat the rising threat of domestic radicalization? I am worried that we are not doing enough.
Despite releasing a strategy and implementation plan for “countering violent extremism” in 2011, the Obama administration has designated no lead agency in charge of overseeing the government’s various counter-radicalization programs. These range from awareness briefings for community leaders to training for state and local law enforcement in spotting signs of radicalization. Many initiatives are largely untested and have no clear way of measuring their impact. In fact, the White House plan says agencies will assess their own progress in carrying out these activities, a grade-your-own-work standard that lacks real accountability.
Surprisingly, the administration also has been unable to provide figures on how much money is being spent on counter-radicalization, and it cannot articulate to Congress how many government personnel or programs are devoted fully or partially to it.
I am alarmed that we are still grappling with such basic issues when the threat environment is changing so quickly. These aren’t yesterday’s extremists, who moved messages between couriers and caves. Today they are releasing propaganda in real time via social media and making it go viral. ISIS has tailored its hateful and repressive ideology to appeal to a younger generation, helping to fuel a subculture disturbingly referred to by some in the media as “jihadi cool.”
The group recently began distributing its own online magazine, Dabiq, taking a page from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose Inspire magazine includes articles like “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” a simple explosives guide for would-be terrorists. While ISIS hasn’t yet begun to provide bomb-making advice, the professionally edited publication is written entirely in English and is a key tool for indoctrinating young potential followers. Some authorities believe that ISIS’s social-media mastermind may be an American college graduate from Boston, reinforcing concerns that the group is ramping up its ability to recruit from the West.
The easy transmission of this extremist propaganda online may be contributing to an uptick in homegrown terrorism. There have been more than 70 violent jihadist plots or attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, according to the Congressional Research Service, and more than two-thirds have been uncovered or have taken place in only the past five years. Many of the suspects were radicalized at least in part by online Islamist propaganda, including the Boston Marathon bombers whose explosive devices were similar to those described in Inspire.
But the administration’s efforts don’t seem to have kept pace with the threat. It is unclear, for instance, whether federal agencies even share a common definition of “countering violent extremism,” an ambiguity that stems from the administration’s reluctance to identify the nature of the problem. For years, it has labeled the Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence,” when it was plainly an act of terror. Definitions matter, and a key first step in properly tackling the current threat is to call it what it is: violent Islamist extremism.
ISIS and other extremist butchers continue to push their perverse propaganda to our children, and we need to be sure we are doing all we can to blunt their momentum. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, I have initiated a top-to-bottom review of the Obama administration’s counter-radicalization efforts. More than ever, we need a full accounting of how taxpayer dollars are being used to confront this growing menace.
In his Wednesday speech, the president seemed to face the reality of the ISIS threat overseas, but these violent Islamists will continue to exploit our open society to infect young people with a hateful world view. To defeat such extremism, we must challenge its insidious ideology wherever it emerges, especially here at home.
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