RADICAL ISLAM TARGETING AMERICA:YORAM ETTINGER
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Radical Islam targeting America
Op-ed: Terrorists convinced that they can get away with murder, and even be rewarded
Yoram Ettinger
The United States is justly perceived as the role-model for democracy: freedom of expression, religion, movement, media, Internet and election. Therefore, the US is perceived as a lethal threat by Muslim regimes in the Middle East, all of which are autocratic, representing an ethnic minority (or a military clique), suppressing the majority and fearing democracy.
The US is properly perceived – by rogue Muslim regimes – as the most effective hurdle on their way to attain historically-strategic goals: Saddam Hussein’s drive to control the Arab World, Assad’s aim to reassert Greater Syria (encompassing Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, parts of Turkey and Israel), Iran’s aspiration to dominate the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, etc.
The US has been targeted as a scapegoat by autocratic Muslim regimes, blaming the US – along with the West and the Jewish State – for the humiliation, frustration and rage over the failure to reclaim the glory of ancient Islam.
Since the 7th century, the vision of Islam has been the gradual domination of the globe. According to Prof. Bernard Lewis, the leading expert on Islam, Muslims believe that their victory in Afghanistan, over the USSR, caused the fall of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, they are convinced that defeating the US would be less difficult, in view of American retreats from Vietnam (1973), the US Embassy in Teheran (1979/1980), Beirut (1983) and Somalia (1993) and the expected evacuation/retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan.
They assume that anti-US terrorism (e.g. 1995/6, 1998 and 2000 anti-US Islamic terrorism in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen, culminating in 9/11) entails sustained punishment, while yielding US concessions and retreats overseas and eventually on the US mainland.
Anti-US Islamic terrorism has been emboldened by counter-terrorism officials – such as John Brennan and Eric Holder, President Obama’s Advisor on Countering Terrorism and Attorney General respectively – who claim that there is no military solution to terrorism, that there is no global terrorism, that there is no Jihadist terrorism, since “Jihad is a process which purifies the soul” and that terrorism is largely a law-enforcement challenge rather than a military issue. Such deficient moral clarity breeds a deficient operational clarity, emboldening further terrorism.
Rogue/autocratic Muslim regimes have realized that terror is the most effective anti-US weapon, increasingly on the American mainland. They assume that Western leaders have reconciled themselves to engagement and coexistence with terrorism, rather than endeavor to devastate terror regimes through a systematic series of disproportionate traumatic blows.
Terrorism provides the element of deniability, while eroding the confidence of Americans in the capability of their government to maintain homeland security. Terrorists are convinced that they can get away with murder, and even be rewarded. They have concluded that the pen and the tongue are extremely effective in complementing the sword in the battle against Western civilization, led by the US.
The current Islamic assault on the US mainland, through the proliferation of many dormant terror cells and a campaign of conversion to Islam – largely funded by Saudi Arabia – is presented by Yehudit Barsky, Director of Middle East and International Terrorism Division of the American Jewish Congress:
- Omar Ahmed, co-founder of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which has been connected to Hamas and other Islamic terror organizations: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant…The Koran should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”
- US-born Imam Zaid Shakir, a frequent participant at CAIR’s seminars, is a co-founder of the Muslim Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California, which aims at producing Islamic scholars, who will entrench Islam in the US: “Every Muslim who is honest would like to see America become a Muslim country. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be a Muslim.” Zaytuna College highlights the supposed relevance of the Sharia laws to the US legal system.
- US-born Al-Qaeda operative, Anwar al-Awlaki, inspired US-born Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 13 American soldiers on November 9, 2009 at Ft. Hood, Texas. He trained Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, who attempted to detonate explosives on December 25, 2009 in Northwest Airlines flight on route from Amsterdam to Detroit.
- US citizen Faisal Shahzad was trained by Taliban and inspired by Anwar Al-Awlaki, attempted the May 1, 2010 Times Square car bombing.
- The Al Shabaab, “Holy Warrior Youth Movement,” is recruiting in the US via Internet. Eight Al Shabaab recruits – including converts to Islam – were arrested in Minnesota.
Is it realistic to assume that rogue Muslim regimes, which have employed terrorism since the 7th century in order to settle intra-Muslim conflicts, would not employ terrorism in order to settle their conflicts with the US – the “Big Satan”?! Islamic terrorism constitutes a clear and present danger to the US and to the Free World, irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, independent of the Palestinian issue and regardless of Israel’s policies or even the very existence of Jewish State – the “Little Satan.”
Professor Fuad Ajami, a leading Middle East politial scientist, issued a warning to US policy-makers in the NY Times back in 1986: “No American diplomatic scheme would spare America the fury of those bent upon eradicating its presence in the region. It is a false reading of a large civilization to say that the terror springs from the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians… It springs from deeper social, economic and political pressures within Mideast society, from the traumas of dislocated newly urbanized youth…Some of it is hatched by merciless men for whom terror is a profession that pays… It does not advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians to pretend that it would solve a problem much larger than their conflict…”
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