Radical Islam Will Win, unless…. (Part I) Dr. Robin McFee,
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/radical-islam-will-win-unless-part-i
Actually I think Radical Islam will win. The team unfettered by rules usually wins. A boxer fighting under the Marquis of Queensbury rules will get his ass kicked by a cage fighter, or someone employing street boxing rules. Jihad thinks it is the virtuous party, protected by Allah, and with a thousand year tradition of ‘all is fair’ in the service of Islam, e.g. no holds barred fighting, they are a formidable adversary. Against such an adversary, we must recognize pesky details like rules will not get in their way. Good can lose to evil, unless willing to pay the price necessary to win. And sometimes the price is steep. But the cost of losing to evil is even greater.
Before we get too far into this article, let me be clear – God is in all of us; whatever religion we opt in order to share His love, whether Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Wiccan or Islam – I value and respect. But when a faith, any faith, uses itself as a tool for bloodshed, then the faith has to own up to a responsibility to clean its own house, and demonstrate not only a remorse, but commitment to prevent future acts of hatred and violence. The non Jihadists in Islam’s case have a responsibility to act. If as Islamists state the Jihadists represent as small minority of Moslems, then clearly there is an overwhelming number of good guys, right? So act like good guys! Such is my stance on 21st century Islam. And were I alive several centuries ago, it would be my stance against the Catholic Inquisition. Lest anyone decide to misrepresent me, or devolve into media inaccuracy by distorting my views, let me reiterate my stated and lifelong belief that all religions in their best forms allow us to reach our higher angels, and this includes Islam – a faith that is based upon 5 tenets, not the least of which is charity. I’ve experienced the kindness and generosity of Moslems, and worked with them on various philanthropies. But for better or worse the bloodthirsty members of their faith need to be reined in and stopped by the decent members of the faith. Closing ranks for the sake of Islam, crying Islamophobia or denying the evil exists does everyone a disservice.
Fact remains radical Islam is a jihadist movement based upon Islam. There is no way around it. If Jihadists were claiming to kill in the name of John the Baptist, or North American Baptists, I would say their movement is based upon the Baptist faith. A distortion, but nevertheless still invoking it. If the moderate Moslems can get the Jihadists to name a different set of marching orders, I would gladly drop the term radical Islam, but until that occurs, we must familiarize ourselves with the very ideology that serves foundationally for the folks who are inspired to challenge our culture, and bring death into our communities from Paris and Brussels, to Glasgow and London, from San Bernardino to Boston, and NY, the Pentagon and Orlando.
As our nation increasingly becomes secular, and removed from faith or God, it becomes more difficult to embrace the notion that religion for some is a governing force in everyday life. So the idea that religion can motivate someone to kill, randomly or not, wholesale or with individuals, is one not easily accepted. It is against this backdrop we must inspire a wakeup call.
Alas getting our countrymen long accustomed to privilege and comfort to consider sacrifice and all out war against such an adversary as radical Islamic Jihad is the second problem we face. Our greatest challenge will be to convince the naysayers, doubters, and deniers that there is evil in the world, evil in our midst, and one name it goes by is Jihad. The best trick evil does is convincing people it doesn’t exist. We could learn a thing or two about fighting evil, and Radical Islam from Sun Tzu …
“If you do not know your enemies or yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
Sun Tzu, in the Art of War
9/11 is testament to that. So was Boston. So was Orlando. There will be more.
Radical Islam is winning. It has won before. Islam murdered and drove out the indigenous people from the Middle East and Asia Minor, even parts of Russia, and North Africa for hundreds of years. Other cultures are not compatible with Islam in their end game. Coexistence might be a nice sound bite and bumper sticker (one I believe in by the way, in an ideal world), but in Jihad there is one way, and one way only. Failure to understand this is a failure to comprehend that our culture will be subverted to their culture. It is already happening – in Michigan, in New Jersey and other places practicing Sharia.
In the book “Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates,” it becomes clear (radical?) Islamists utilized similarly savage tactics in the 1700’s and 1800’s that they use today – human trafficking, torture, murder and piracy. Moslems, contrary to ultra leftist rewrites of history, were NOT the indigenous faith or people of Egypt, nor did they say “pretty please convert.” Coptic Christians were a more longstanding resident, predating Islam, and converted by coercion, not conviction.
And in contemporary society, Radical Islam has caused a rift in political discourse, polarizing Americans, instead of unifying them to a common purpose – their defeat! By perverting our inherent tolerance and good will, and deftly using our own sensibilities and freedoms against us, Jihadists, even so called moderate Moslems have conjured an illusion such that many of our countrymen don’t even believe there is a war for cultural supremacy, a war against Western civilization, in essence a war against us, going on. Apparently 9/11, or 4/15, or now June 2015, these were anomalies or the fault of US foreign policy, or non-existent at all! Any of my ultra liberal friends reading this will assuredly think I am Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall. They know me too well to dare suggest the “R” card. Fortunately I am unmoved by sound bite philosophers. And unmasking evil, no matter how much society wants to deny it exists, is not racist; it is honest, and vital.
Although a spoof film, the movie American Carol revealed what the future, our nation, could look like under Sharia law. Burkas instead of Victoria Secret doesn’t do it for me, thank you very much. We are asked to make accommodations to Islamic culture in our own country – like allowing Sharia courts? Are we crazy? You don’t get to have two legal systems. Live under the Constitution like the rest of us; which means no honor killings, no genital mutilation, no control over women. The Italians, Jews, Chinese, South Africans and others who have come here did not make such demands for accommodations.
To be sure we won’t see our culture gone overnight. Like the frog in the water – we won’t notice we are boiling because incrementally the heat is turned up. One city, one town at a time. Because our adversaries – what else would you call folks who come to a country with the intent on changing it, or destroying those who disagree with their faith? – think long term. For me long term is a semester, maybe a year. For Jihadists, long term is a generation, or 100 years. We are fighting a war we can’t win because we cannot fathom a generational, cultural, societal or ideological war. Territorial war – absolutely. Political wars, sure. But cultural, that will take 100 years? We aren’t wired for that in the West.
Radical Islam and Jihad are winning because, like evil itself, it has convinced much of the public that it doesn’t exist as a threat. Obama warns we should not link radical Islam with Islam, or chastise a religion based on one group that perverts it, and the radical and non radicals immediately close ranks and cry “foul” when the word Islam is used at all while talking about terrorism. That is how they win the word war – the moment you link reality i.e. Islam (radical or not, you decide), with Jihad or terrorism, you are a racist or bigot. So much for talking about one of the root causes of the problem. It is a cultural divide between a group who believe all of life’s activities are inextricably linked to their faith, and a culture that believes in separation of church and state (daily lives). And in our zeal to prove we are not racists or bigots we take a permissive approach to Islam, by allowing Sharia to take hold in our society, by redacting the terms in our security protocols, and similar. Radical Islam is winning because it is altering our consciousness towards it, and because it is changing our communities to adapt to their laws, culture and traditions, instead of them adapting to ours. It is winning because the notion of melting pot has been replaced in the public sensibility with the concept of a salad bar – everything is separate, no sacrifice, no blending in. The very notion of melting pot has been labeled racist and xenophobic. It is winning because we do not understand the nature of the threat. It is winning because we do not have the political leadership willing to fight effectively. It is winning because we as a society, or those of us who understand what is really happening, do not have the courage to fight for what we believe in. It is winning because radical Islamic Jihadists understand us and exploit the many weaknesses we provide all too readily. It is winning because other anti-America forces at play in the United States are helping them. It is winning because we have weakened our intelligence and protection communities.
Radical Islam is winning because we do not understand that an army, that combatants do not need to wear a uniform. We are fighting an ideology, a movement. We are fighting civilian warriors. That is a hard one for our Western sensibilities to understand. But we are trapped into thinking through the prism of our world view and experiences – all Western perspectives. And that is why we often lose in foreign policy and international arenas. Jihadists know we are averse to killing women, children, and folks we view as non combatants. To me, anyone who throws a rock, carries a knife, holds a gun, wears a suicide vest, or harbors a terrorist IS a combatant, and a target. But that is the result of spending time in their world, and seeing it through a radical Islamic prism. They saw our societal response to military actions from Vietnam to the Gulf. Because of that the radical Islamists will continue to use women, children and civilians – as shields, and as weapons, because to them they are viable martyrs, to us they are inconceivable as targets. To shoot a non uniformed person is anathema to our morality. To our enemy it is business as usual. The US is just another battlefield for a culture war that they are already winning. Their warriors and their ‘peaceful’ negotiators who are in the highest positions of political influence, that includes weakening our intelligence and law enforcement communities – consider this is a most advanced form of infiltration, sabotage, and warfare. Radical Islam uses all the tools – sometimes violence, mostly not, but always the same agenda. Think 3 D chess!
Let me share a thought about ‘lone wolf’ attackers. Obama and his supporters would have you believe ‘lone wolf’ is the same as isolated, anomalous, having no relationship with organized Islam or part of a cabal of Jihadists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Beyond the obvious that all these supposed lone wolves are connected to radical Islam (exhorting Allah being the subtle tip off), they are the Holy Grail of the Jihad movement. And they are the result of year long efforts at targeting, inspiring, training, and tapping into folks who are susceptible to the notion of martyrdom. Many years ago I chaired a terrorism conference that focused on asymmetric warfare and cyber threats. One of our speakers demonstrated how various Jihadist factions were using the Internet – the public and dark net versions – to attract susceptible folks for recruitment. Using affinity sites, seemingly innocent gaming programs and other approaches, as well as aiming people to certain mosques and Islamic centers to interact with clerics known to be pro Jihad (like one in Orlando who was patently anti gay), anti West, they hoped to create an army of lone attackers. The ideal was to have American born lone wolves. Why? So the ready group of apologists for Allah – the ultra left – could immediately warn everyone against a ‘rush to judgment’ that this wasn’t religious, it was an American, not Middle Easterner, and therefore not Jihadist. And they could further defend by saying he was crazy, and a loner. Those are two characteristics that make Jihadists so formidable. Duh! So Obama is a bit disingenuous. All these lone wolves are part of the radical Islamic movement. Those pulling the strings are in the shadows. Where evil lurks!
Radical Islam is winning because…..
- Our immigration policy is ludicrous, exposing our country to the very means of destroying our language, culture and sensibilities as a nation
- Border security is laughable, allowing near unfettered entry into the United States for the good and the bad.
- Our foreign policy, energy policy, economic policy and military policy are faulty
- We have abandoned our values and culture in the name of some false notion of tolerance, creating a setting for societal suicide
- Our stagnant economy weakens our communities, and alters the focus of our people, making them more attuned to bread and circus than threats to our future
- A one sided media and university system that indoctrinates instead of informs or educates
- Increased lawlessness not guns, are causing rampant killings, as moral relativity prevail
- The silencing of dissent
- A growing fifth column within our midst capable of far reaching, multipronged attacks we remain blithely unconcerned about, relegating such notions of Clancy novels and wild imagination instead of clear and present dangers
But while these all contribute to a nation increasingly vulnerable to all manner and means of threat, not the least of which is Radical Islamic Jihad, all pale to insignificance compared to one threat above all else – us!
Remember “e pluribus Unum” …from many we become one? Such was the culture and society I grew up in. But not so much today. The “I’ll get mine” group – marginalized in the 1980’s as selfish and unpatriotic – has become a larger, stronger voice in America. I never thought I would live to see day when we devolved into the Disunited States of America, where patriotism, and other old fashioned values like marriage (straight or gay), the notion of right and wrong behaviors, neighborliness, freedom of speech for all people – on the right as well as the left, an ability to rest upon conscience fell away, or getting an education in college doesn’t include membership in the DNC as criterion for passing. Reading “100 people who are screwing up America” and “Winning the Future” it is clear I’m not the only one concerned about the breakdown of our social compact called America.
Have we, as the “me” generation on crack lost the feeling of patriotism? I now think of the United States as the affinity group nation where our loyalties seem to align with political party, sporting team, religion, ethnicity, or gender identity, more than with a national sensibility. It just seems that the notion of being an American has become tantamount to a four letter world; our youth don’t seem to feel that deep abiding loyalty or love of country, and too many voices are out there denouncing the US, including a president who started his job with a global apology tour, repudiating our national efforts instead of proudly representing us. Is it any wonder patriotism is relegated to bygone era? Without people willing to share a common cause – whether in the 1780’s or 2016, all a country represents is a place to live, earn a living, or wrestle as much from the government as possible; it no longer represents an ideal, like the shining city on a hill, or beacon of hope or embodiment of a higher civilization. And a funny thing about attitude – once you believe that something lacks value, that becomes a prophesy to reality, as evidenced by the decline of our nation.
I took some solace that Washington, Hamilton, Jay and others encountered similar challenges, and in fact, as one reads the book “The Quartet.” The thirteen colonies were united to fight Great Britain, but then regional jealousies and self interest threatened the union. Henry Knox wrote his former commander – Washington – “We have no politics excepting those creeping principles of self and local interest.” Were it not for the tenacity, and long term thinking of great leaders who ultimately were able to get the diverse members of the confederation to put self interest enough behind the notion of a greater good, North America might well look like Europe, with each colony a sovereign enterprise.
Yet too many Americans, some well meaning to be sure, either do not want to believe there are threats about to be unleashed against us, or because they grew up in the politically correct world of today, are indoctrinated into thinking US policies are the root of all evil, or taught that if we just sit down and find out what folks want peace will reign supreme, and all under the rubric there are no enemies, and to use such a term is provocative unto itself. I am concerned that too many of my acquaintances believe the one sided information in the media – mainstream or social, like face book that by the founder’s own admission, seems to isolate the conservative voice. I am concerned because our leaders, largely financed and influenced by George Soros and his millionaire minions, who have supported people, enterprises and agendas that can, are, and will undermine the United States, including our culture, language, border, influence, values and future. I am concerned because we in the loyal opposition have not pushed back harder, have not utilized our time, talent, treasure, connections and influence to take back the media, and academia so that discourse is not influenced by one, but by many points of view, that our media are in fact more fair and balanced, and not merely shills for the DNC.
Radical Islam Will Win, unless….
We will lose unless we can partner more effectively with the people in a position to make the biggest difference – the Moslems who denounce Jihad. Those in a position to influence young minds, especially suggestible to Islam, are you with us or against us? There is NO middle road. Not speaking out is supporting Jihad. Not turning in someone who is supporting a terror cell is no different than supporting killers. It is not a bad question; it is a question badly needed to be answered. We can and MUST convey that peace loving Moslems in our midst are not the target of our concern. But as Americans, Moslem leaders should be expected to act like they are loyal and patriotic, helping law enforcement before a horrific event, speaking against violence in the mosques and community centers regularly, not merely showing up in front of the 6 O’clock news to protest anti Islamic sentiments after a practitioner of their faith shoots up a night club, or merely standing with a gay pride flag at a memorial to demonstrate solidarity as if that absolves them of all responsibility to the community within which they live. For those who have much, much is expected. Living in the US is a gift. Many would love to enjoy it.
We will lose unless we address the vulnerabilities in our society – political correctness, uncivil discourse, indoctrination instead of education or media information, crazy border and immigration policies, failed foreign and domestic policies that undermine economic infrastructure and fiscal well being. We need more people working, and less people on welfare. We must provide law enforcement and preparedness enterprises the tools and support to do their jobs without political interference. We need a greater sense of law and order without moral relativity or social engineering, and to remind our fellow citizens of the inherent decency America is – helping others in times of need, and providing freedoms unheard of in most parts of the world, including Europe, where freedom of speech is much less free than in the US. We must enlist more Americans in this fight. But fight we must. We do not have to abandon our core beliefs to do so.
We will lose unless take a long view – much like Ronald Reagan did. His ideas of the 1970’s took over a decade to come to fruition, and the United States was better because of him.
We will lose unless we work together. The time for political posturing, partisan attacks, and denying the threat is past. Together, living up to our highest angels as a good and decent people, but with the resolve of warriors determined to fight for and protect our nation, we can defeat radical Islam in our midst. To do any less imperils our people. No one should face the horrors of 9/11 or June 2015 or Marathon Monday because of nationality, sexual orientation or living in the West.
We will lose, if one Orlando massacre is not enough of a warning. As for me, it is one too many.
Dr. Robin McFee, MPH, FACPM, FAACT, is a physician, and clinical toxicologist. As medical director of Threat Science – and nationally recognized expert in WMD preparedness, she consults with government agencies, corporations and the media. Dr. McFee is the former director of the Center for Bioterrorism Preparedness (CB PREP) and bioweapons – WMD adviser to the Domestic Security Task Force, the former chair of the Global Terrorism Council of ASIS International, and a member of the US Counterterrorism Advisory Team. She has coauthored two books: Toxico-Terrorism by McGraw Hill and The Handbook of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Agents, published by Informa/CRC Press
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