RUTHFULLY YOURS

Obama described the massacre carried out by Muslim mass murderer Omar Mateen as “an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been concerned about.” But there’s nothing “homegrown” about Omar Mateen. Omar was fighting for a foreign ideology. He just happened to be born in this country. Being born in America does not make him a domestic terrorist.

One of our biggest errors in the fight against Islamic terrorism has been to treat it as a domestic terrorism problem. Islamic terrorism is not domestic terrorism. Not even when its perpetrators, like Omar Mateen or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer, are born in the United States.

What distinguishes domestic terrorism from international terrorism is not the perpetrator’s place of birth.

One of the worst foreign terrorists in American history was Anton Dilger, who, like Hasan, was born in Virginia. As part of the German terrorist campaign against the United States during WW1, which included attacks such as the Black Tom explosion that damaged the Statue of Liberty and was heard in Philadelphia, Dilger plotted a biological warfare campaign that would decimate American horses. Working out of a laboratory near the White House, he experimented with anthrax on animals and his fellow operatives worked to infect as many horses as they could.

This entire episode of history has been largely forgotten. As have its lessons.

Anton Dilger was an international terrorist, despite being born to a Civil War hero, because his agenda was foreign, not domestic. Domestic terrorists seek political change in the United States. International terrorists seek to damage the United States. They are interested in domestic politics only to the extent that it serves their larger agenda for damaging the United States.

Islamic terrorists are not seeking domestic political change the way that Bill Ayers was. They are not domestic elements, but foreign elements. And yet we treat them as if they were domestic terrorists.

On June 7, Nicholas Teausant, the aspiring ISIS fighter from California, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. As he handed down the judgment, U.S. District Judge John Mendez told Teausant “There is no room for error. The risks are too high.” Omar Mateen, the Muslim racist who on June 11 gunned down 49 innocent people at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, confirms that the judge’s statement is all too true.

Teausant, 22, has been portrayed as something of a dim bulb, a National Guard washout with mental issues. “Assad Teausant bigolsmurf,” as he called himself online, discussed his desire to train Syrian fighters, bomb the Los Angeles subway system and launch a civil war that would topple the American government. The Muslim convert had little military experience but gathered information on bomb making and jihad tactics from the English-language al-Qaida magazine Inspire. He spoke of attacking a “Zionist” daycare center.

Teausant wanted to join the ISIS, explaining “I would love to join Allah’s army” and “I want to go fight in Syria.” He would only return to America after President Obama was dead, Congress gone, and chaos prevailing across the nation. Teausant offered to make a video for the ISIS and leave his face “wide open to the camera.” He wanted to be a “commander” and if he landed on the FBI’s 12 most wanted list, he explained, “that means I’m doing something right.” The aspiring terrorist was unaware that the FBI was onto him. He planned to reach Syria by flying from Canada but FBI agents arrested him on March 16, 2014, in Blaine, Washington, near the Canadian border.

Prosecutors sought approval from the Justice Department for a plea deal, but on December 1, 2015, apart from any such agreement, Teausant pleaded guilty to supporting a terrorist organization. The next day, American-born Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani national, murdered 14 Americans and injured 21 in San Bernardino, California. The mass murder was the worst terrorist attack since September 11, 2001, but in the early going public officials hesitated to identify the killings as terrorism.

George Bush also “purged” references to jihad…see:https://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/the-implications-of-the-dismissal-of-stephen-coughlin-joint-staff-pentagon

His thesis, “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad,” was recently accepted by the National Defense Intelligence College, and deals specifically with Islamic Doctrine dealing with doctrinal drivers of jihad, and the failure of the United States leadership to learn and understand this doctrine.

“on Thursday, January 3, 2008 Mr. Coughlin was told by his employers that his contract would not be renewed due to the fact his message, and therefore he himself, had become too “politically hot.” In a meeting between Mr. Coughlin and a member of Mr. England’s staff, at which Hesham Islam unexpectedly attended, Mr. Islam asked Mr. Coughlin to “soften his message” regarding Islamic Doctrine. Mr. Coughlin refused. Islam was heard referring to Coughlin as a “Christian zealot with a poison pen.” Despite the fact that no one in his chain of command has disputed the veracity, accuracy, and balance for his thesis, lectures, or briefings, Coughlin’s employment is being terminated for speaking the truth to the Department of Defense.”

Because John Brennan and Obama purged “offensive” training material.

While Omar Mateen was casing other gay clubs to determine where he wanted to commit jihad mass murder, law enforcement officials had no idea a jihadi might ever consider such targets.

On Sunday, the East Orlando Post reported startling words from James Copenhaver, whom it described as a “veteran investigator and former Orlando law enforcement officer.” Said Copenhaver:

I have been in this business for 30 years, and we all in law enforcement have talked about one of the theme parks getting hit by these terrorist killers. Never in all my years of training, and being involved in several investigative units, to include the FBI Task Force, would we have ever guessed a LGBT club be a target of an terrorist attack.

Why would they never have guessed?

Because the FBI and other law enforcement agencies don’t study Islam, and this is a direct result of Muslim groups demanding the removal of such material. Those who are committed to protecting us are taught to downplay and deny the motivating ideology behind jihad terror attacks.

The month of Ramadan just begun for Muslims is not merely about the rigors of fasting and prayers, it is also about meditating on man’s responsibility in this world and accountability in the next. One of the most urgent issues for Muslims at the present time is take responsibility for those who commit violence against innocent people in the name of Islam, and unequivocally repudiate them and their theology that defiles Islam and makes a mockery of God’s revelation to Muhammad that first occurred, as tradition records, in the month of Ramadan.

But nearly fifteen years after 9/11 and counting, Muslims in America as elsewhere remain in denial of Islam’s role (or a perverse theological rendition of Islam) in the terrorist violence that spread from the Middle East around the world. This explains in part why any expectation that so-called “moderate” Muslims in sufficient numbers will publicly repudiate their religious compatriots who engage in terrorism as an act of religious obligation, or jihad (holy war), has not materialized yet and likely will not unless there is some significant change in majority American view of Islam that presses upon Muslims.

The emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the presidential election in November could be the spur for a sufficient number of Muslims, if they have courage and imagination, to break from their past. A Trump presidency might well facilitate the making of an American Islam as an effective counterweight to political Islam, or Islamism, that has been ruinous for Muslims everywhere in modern times.

Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims last December “from entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what is going on” followed the Muslim rampage of terror and murder in San Bernardino, California, on December 2, 2015, and the horrific terrorist attacks several weeks earlier in Paris. This suggestion of Trump at a minimum is a prudent choice in defending Americans against those who wish to do them harm.

There is no sign of Islamist terrorism ebbing in the near future. Instead, in the Arab-Muslim world Islamist terrorism has become a daily occurrence, destroying whatever little remains of a culture and civilization that once rivaled that of ancient Rome and Persia.

It is beyond disquieting when warnings that have been issued for years are ignored, and as a consequence, innocent Americans are the sacrificial lambs for this evil disease known as Islamic jihad, or war against kafirs (infidels) to establish Islam’s sharia law.

The idea that politicians who receive briefings about terrorism profess to be shocked by the recent massacre in Orlando is disingenuous at best. As Bruce Bawer explains, “the only shocking thing about ISIS’s attack on a gay establishment is that it took this long.” After all, according to The Reliance of the Traveller which is the sharia manual “there is consensus among Muslims … that sodomy is an enormity. It is even viler and uglier than adultery,” which is “punished brutally, including by death.”

Three years ago, a Muslim phoned NY1, “a New York City TV news station and stated that all homosexuals should be beheaded.” Horrific videos are constantly posted showing gays being thrown from rooftops in Iran and other sharia-controlled countries.

Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Andrew C. McCarthy, Raymond Ibrahim, Frank Gaffney, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, and a host of other prophets have been warning about the poisonous message of Islam for decades. Yet the leadership at the helm of this country invites Muslim Brotherhood operatives for consultation, hires people devoted to sharia expansion, and won’t acknowledge that Islam is behind these attacks on Western civilization even when the very attackers proudly proclaim their fealty to Islam.

Now that we are in the “highest threat environment since 9/11,” it is incumbent, yet again, to delineate the dastardly ideas integral to Islam. It is “a purely aggressive ideology, which teaches Muslims to hate the infidel.” Once Muslims grow in number, the attacks and abuse of locals begin and never end. It started in the U.K. with the grooming and rape of thousands of non-Muslim British girls. Now we have Londonistan.

Sweden is now the rape capital of the world since the admission of Muslim immigrants.

One year ago, Iranian ayatollah Ali Khamenei “encouraged Western youth to find out about Islam for themselves and not allow their image of it to be clouded by prejudice.” Youths were to “study and research and … receive knowledge of Islam from its primary and original sources.”

President Obama has run roughshod over Congress, and most of the media give him a pass. This has left the judiciary as the last check on executive abuse, and now even that may be falling away. That’s how we read Tuesday’s D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision propping up the new “net neutrality” rules to regulate the Internet like a 19th-century railroad.

A 2-1 panel in US Telecom Association vs. FCC upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 regulations that classify the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The FCC has thrice tried to ram through regulation dictating what an internet-service company can charge for its services; the D.C. Circuit struck down earlier attempts. Now the court has endorsed the most legally and procedurally egregious iteration.

Judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan ruled for the FCC in large part by invoking Chevron deference, a 1984 Supreme Court doctrine that says courts should bow to agency rule-makings when the law is ambiguous. But the relevant 1996 statute says the internet shall remain “unfettered by Federal or State regulation,” which is not vague. The law further says that a service “that provides access to the Internet” may not be straddled with Title II.

The Supreme Court said in 2015’s King v. Burwell that agencies deserve no genuflection in matters of “deep economic and political significance.” This surely applies to reordering the most powerful commercial engine of the century.

There’s also last year’s Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA in which the High Court ruled that agencies can’t impose rules “unrecognizable to the Congress that designed it.” Newt Gingrich and friends ran Congress in 1996 and didn’t want central command of the internet. Yet the D.C. Circuit ignored these instructions and relied on one precedent involving a discrete transmission issue.

This abuse of Chevron is reason enough for the Supreme Court to overturn the circuit, but there’s more. The decision renders the Administrative Procedures Act meaningless: The FCC proposed one rule and then subbed in a different scheme after pressure from President Obama. No notice, no comment period. The circuit court calls the final draft a “logical outgrowth” of the proposal. This is an invitation for bureaucracies to publish obtuse drafts and finalize something else when convenient. CONTINUE AT SITE

Sunday’s massacre in Orlando contradicts President Obama’s many attempts to downplay the risks that Islamic State poses to the U.S. homeland, so it’s no wonder he wants to change the subject to something more congenial. To wit, his disdain for Donald Trump and Republicans.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,’” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State. “That’s the key, they tell us. We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer. We’re unaware of any previous American war fought against an enemy it was considered indecorous or counterproductive to name. Dwight Eisenhower routinely spoke of “international Communism” as an enemy. FDR said “Japan” or “Japanese” 15 times in his 506-word declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. If the U.S. is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why. You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men. The threat is religious and ideological.

Islamic State sees itself as the vanguard of a religious movement rooted in a literalist interpretation of Islamic scriptures that it considers binding on all Muslims everywhere. A small but significant fraction of Muslims agree with that interpretation, which is why Western law enforcement agencies must pay more attention to what goes on inside mosques than in Christian Science reading rooms.

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” leads to other analytical failures, such as his description of the Orlando terrorist as “homegrown.” The Islamic State threat is less a matter of geography than of belief, which is why it doesn’t matter whether Islamic State directly ordered or coordinated Sunday’s attack so long as it inspired it. This, too, is a reminder of the centrality of religion to Islamic State’s effectiveness.

No wonder the Administration seemed surprised by the Islamic State’s initial success in taking Mosul in 2014—soldiers of faith tend to fight harder than soldiers of fortune—and by its durability despite the U.S.-led air campaign. Last November Mr. Obama boasted that Islamic State was “contained” a day before its agents slaughtered 130 people in Paris. Days later, White House factotum Ben Rhodes insisted “there’s no credible threat to the homeland at this time.” Then came San Bernardino. CONTINUE AT SITE

The New York Times has an interesting profile of Omar Mateen, the Orlando terrorist who murdered 49 people and wounded more than 50 others at a gay nightclub over the weekend. In the main, the Gray Lady grapples with the profound challenge the FBI faces in striking the balance between investigating ambiguous signs of potential terrorist inclinations and clearing suspects (or “persons of interest,” as they say in the biz) as to whom the evidence seems weak.

It will take some time to draw firm conclusions about Mateen’s case. Still, FBI Director Jim Comey has been admirably open in explaining that while agents appear to have (twice) probed Mateen responsibly, the Bureau must keep exploring whether clues were missed and more could have been done.

That aside, there are two major flaws in the Times’ account, and quite possibly in the government’s self-examination of its performance.

These errors illuminate Washington’s quarter-century of consciously avoiding the proximate cause of jihadist terror: sharia-supremacist ideology.

Sharia-Supremacist Ideology

Drawing on an interview with Mateen’s ex-wife and on aspects of Mateen’s behavior that have been uncovered so far — e.g., frequenting gay bars, possibly using a gay dating app — the Times reasonably speculates that Mateen may have been gay and deeply conflicted about “his true identity out of anger and shame.”

The paper, however, steadfastly avoids asking: What could have caused such wrenching self-loathing?

After all, if he was gay, Mateen would hardly have been the first person to experience great anguish over his sexual preference, despite the fact that American culture has dramatically normalized homosexuality. Yet, those people manage to control their psychological turmoil and depression without walking into a gay club and committing mass-murder.

Drawing on an interview with Mateen’s ex-wife and on aspects of Mateen’s behavior that have been uncovered so far — e.g., frequenting gay bars, possibly using a gay dating app — the Times reasonably speculates that Mateen may have been gay and deeply conflicted about “his true identity out of anger and shame.”

The paper, however, steadfastly avoids asking: What could have caused such wrenching self-loathing?