FSM National Security Team
Editor’s note: As we approach the end of 2009 – the first year of a new administration and the end of nearly a decade of fighting jihad – we asked our writers to share their thoughts on where we’ve been and where we as a nation and a culture have yet to go. Part Two will publish on Thursday, December 31st.
Dr. Sami Alrabaa:
The Spread of Radical Islam Worldwide
Every time I read that a suicide or car bomber has murdered people – innocent people – around him, in crowded places, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere, in the name of Islam, in the name of Allah, I feel very sad. As a matter of fact, I do not blame the thugs for committing such crimes in the first place. I blame it on the Koran and Hadith, allegedly the word of Allah and His messenger’s prophet, Muhammad. Both the Koran and Hadith are replete with passages that incite to hatred, violence, intolerance against non-Muslims and weak Muslim believers, and discrimination against women. If these atrocious passages were confined to the “holy” scriptures of Islam, that might be tolerated under freedom of belief. But the problem is that young Muslim brains are stuffed with these passages in madrassas (Koran schools) that spread like mushrooms in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere in the world, including Germany. Suicide and car bombers are promised paradise and 70 gorgeous virgin girls. The Koran and Hadith are the root causes of terror these days, i.e. after 9/11. Before 9/11, Islam was not an issue. The majority of Muslims lived in peace, like followers of all other faiths. 9/11 has invigorated radical Islam, and radical Muslims are proud of their “achievements.”
What also makes me sad is the fact that the West and on top of it, the USA, still cherishes friendly relations with Saudi Arabia, the cradle of fanatic Islam, although they know that the despotic Saudi regime is funding radical Islam across the world. Billions of petrodollars are spent on madrassas and arms for Islamic terrorists.
Saudi Arabia is the root cause of Islamic terror. Fifteen of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi and this should have delivered a wake-up call for the West. But for economic and oil-strategic considerations, the West is turning a blind eye to the root causes of Islamic terror. And the West is still, sadly, fighting the tip of the terror pyramid not its real causes.
If we get united in the fight against Islamic terror, we will succeed. We may not win the fight militarily, but certainly we will do so if we start fighting the root causes of this terror.
I have published numerous articles trying to make the above clear. I am really grateful to FamilySecurityMatters.org for giving me the opportunity to post my articles on its website. I also want to thank Carol Taber and Pam Meister for the great the job they are doing. We need more people like Carol and Pam and their site, which really belongs to all of all of us, contributors and readers.
Combating Islamic terror is the moral duty of all decent peace-loving people. Not only the “house gases” are threatening our planet, the poisonous gases of Islam are too.
Despite Islamic terror, I wish everybody peace in 2010.
Col. David F. Bedey (U.S. Army, ret.):
Facing Our Challenges
The last decade of the 20th century began with the end of the Cold War and the hope of “a new world order,” marked by international cooperation and peace. We were finally shaken from this pleasant, though ahistorical, dream on September 11, 2001, when Islamists issued a blunt repudiation of our way of life in the form of passenger jets flown into buildings. Yes, there had been warning signs, such as the attack on the USS Cole and the first bombing of the World Trade Center. But these we chose to ignore – or rather, view as inconvenient law enforcement matters. The horrific deaths of 3,000 Americans disabused most of us of this fantasy.
As we come to the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the struggle against radical Islam continues while myriad new challenges to our national security have emerged. China has become an economic powerhouse and is rapidly modernizing its military. A revanchist Russia delights in thwarting U.S. initiatives at the UN Security Council. An oil-rich Venezuelan thug is intent on destabilizing Latin American democracies. A psycho-state, North Korea, now possesses nuclear weapons, and the mullahs in Iran are not far behind.
The host of threats facing America today are indeed unprecedented. But generations before ours have faced threats that in the context of their times surely were as daunting. Now, as then, the keys to preserving our national security are clearly recognizing the threats before us, mustering the power – economic and military – to counter these threats, and possessing the will to steadfastly exert our national power.
Are the President, his administration, and his Congressional allies up to meeting their fundamental responsibility: protecting and defending America? The events of the past year do not inspire confidence, as indicated by the following sample of observations:
* Does the Pentagon’s decision to refer to our conflict with the Islamofascists as an “overseas contingency operation” rather than war portray sophistication or does it reveal ignorance?
* Does the administration’s decision to try al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates in a civilian court reflect a clear understanding of the threat posed by these men and their odious ideology?
* Has the spectacle of an American president bowing to a Saudi king, a Japanese emperor, and a Chinese strongman enhanced our prestige in the world or has it emboldened our enemies?
* Will the staggering deficits being run up by Congress so retard economic recovery that we will be unable to sustain our military in the long run?
* Would passing “cap and trade” legislation –a thus strangling the U.S. economy – amount to a form of unilateral disarmament, since our rivals (notably China) are not keen on following this example?
* Will further expansion of the welfare state enervate us as a people?
* What are the limits to the policy of reaching out to the Iranian regime?
* Does the Army Chief of Staff’s seemingly incongruous statement in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings that “it would be a greater tragedy if diversity became a casualty here” reveal a triumph of multiculturalism at the expense of commonsense?
As we look forward to 2010 and beyond, finding the answers to these questions and more will be essential if we are to craft a realistic strategy for facing the world as it is. We do not inhabit a cosmopolitan nirvana populated by “global citizens,” no matter how much we might wish it were so. Human nature being what it is, it is unlikely that we ever will.
C. Austin Burrell:
Nostalgia Felt For Constitutional Law Lost in the Last 100 Years
As we come to the end of another decade, I look back on the continuing, steady march towards a society that would disavow not only the Constitution, but the right of individuals to worship as they deem appropriate. I have looked at the exponential increase in the power of our government, in every case at the expense of individual liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I was encouraged by the rise of the Tea Party movement in response to Congressional actions that would yet again seek to have the U.S. government relieve American voters of the burdensome inconvenience of choice in their freedoms and rights of choice, beside that most intangible of rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence, that being the freedom to pursue happiness. The key word here is pursuit. Our Declaration of Independence did not guarantee happiness, and that was a carefully articulated phrase. Our founders saw that no government could guarantee happiness except at the price of invaluable individual liberties. As we enter the coming New Year, let every American, and every voter remember this when they choose their political representatives. As has been said so clearly, “Any government strong enough give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” There is no free lunch in our system of the government, which can only give you what they take from you. If you don’t guard your rights with strength, you will lose all of them before you wake up. We are on the edge of a bottomless abyss, and if the American people don’t push back, they will fall into a tortured time of longing for what might have been.
Carolyn Cooke:
Fighting for Our Sovereignty
As Americans’ rights were eroded by the federal government, socialism or something worse, became the political ideology of 2009. The events of this year turned the United States Constitution on its ear and left the American people outraged and, perhaps, finally mobilized. There is yet more bad news for the stability and security of our sovereign nation.
One of the most alarming and purposely underreported stories of 2009 was the administration’s systematic dismantling of the interior enforcement of federal immigration law. Their refusal to take steps to secure the southern border, as signed into law during the Bush administration, is reprehensible. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s declaration that the border is “more secure” is an outright lie. By every means available, the current administration has been moving “full steam ahead” with a de facto amnesty by allowing as many illegal immigrants to enter the United States as ever before, and once here, to reside without fear of deportation. Indeed, the administration has been facilitating the invasion of unidentified, unvetted individuals.
Not one mile of additional physical or virtual fencing has been built or more border patrol agents added. Interior enforcement programs and prior policies for the apprehension and deportation of known illegal aliens have been gutted. Only illegal aliens committing the most serious of crimes, such as violent crimes, human smuggling, narcotics trafficking, etc. are being deported. In an attempt to hide the number of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, Secretary Napolitano has silenced the reporting of the immigration status of criminals to the media and the public by declaring that illegal aliens fall under the Privacy Act of 1974. Our security remains at high risk from unknown individuals, many from Muslim nations in Africa, residing within our borders, their intentions unknown.
At the end of 2009, once again, against the will of a vast majority of American citizens, a Congressman put forth legislation that will grant a path to citizenship, or amnesty, for the 12 to 20 million foreign nationals residing illegally within our borders. Illegal aliens do not enter our country because they wish to pledge their allegiance to the United States of America as legal immigrants do. Their goals are much different and they remain committed to their countries of origin. Even if this attempt at amnesty legislation fails, the administration has put in place the mechanism to keep our borders open and our immigration laws unenforced.
I find myself astounded by the audacity, the disobedience and the anti-American attitudes of our elected officials in Washington, D.C. 2010 may prove to be an even more tumultuous year than 2009. I am betting on the will and determination of the American people to prevail.
John Dendahl
A New Kind of Information Dissemination
Over coffee at her home in Santa Fe six or seven years ago, executive vice president Linda Cohen introduced me to what would become FamilySecurityMatters.org. Linda first disabused me of my stereotype (left-leaning) of women’s publishing executives, and then told me in detail of plans underway for a publication that would address security issues from perspectives particularly interesting to women. She made clear this initiative had sprung from patriots gravely concerned for their country rather than from entrepreneurs eager to sell advertising and/or another magazine. FSM president Carol Taber, Linda Cohen, and their colleagues have wonderfully fulfilled the tall order they set for themselves. Even better, they managed to make their publication a must-read for an additional audience Linda didn’t mention: men!
Dr. Candace de Russy:
A Lowly, Lying Leftist End-of-Decade
Nothing I’d like better than to throw out a ray of New Year rapture, but, sorry, I’m instead duty bound to add my voice to the rising jeremiad by those fearful for the identity and future of this nation. The precipitous ascent of a radical president and like-minded Congress – adept at deceit and appeasement, as in their dead-of night imposition of the health bill and kowtowing to Iran – have landed us on a volcano of mounting debt and existential vulnerability.
Our freedom and prosperity can very well go up in smoke if the country does not do an about-face this coming year at the polls. Many Americans are now coming to understand our precarious perch, but many more of us – in particular young adults who have been indoctrinated all their lives in schools and colleges controlled by left-leaning unions and ideologues – need to be reached and enlisted in what is no less than a fight for the survival of this republic.
Lee Ellis:
Security Mistakes of the Past Decade do Not Inspire Confidence for the Future
While past security has never been great due to the philosophy of “two oceans of protection,” 9/11 woke us up for only a few months as to this fallacy, and then we were back to minimum security again with open borders and the leaking of war secrets to the media, thus emboldening our enemies. In addition, the people voted for more diplomacy rather than active defensive measures while our enemies laughed at us as they smelled weakness dominate our strength – especially when we treated captured enemy combatants as mere criminals. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle developed attitudes and policies of fecklessness and fatuousness towards both terrorists and the nuclear buildup of Iran and North Korea. Pakistan was the solder that helped glue together much of the Middle East, but we allowed it to weaken to the point where a complete meltdown could result. One glimmer of hope came as Yemen allowed an air strike on an al Qaeda site. One of the 38 killed was thought to be the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who (it is thought) pushed Maj. Nidal Malik into committing the Fort Hood massacre. Hope was shattered twice, though, as news broke that Awlaki escaped, and again on Christmas Day when an al Qaeda-known terrorist, on our watch list for two years, traveled from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then to Detroit with PETN explosives woven into the groin area of his underpants. He tried to ignite it as the plane neared Detroit. With no marshals aboard, passengers again had to come to the rescue. Our government is just now going to modify its security! Whether America starts a new decade of strong security depends on how we vote this coming year. Can the fortitude, values and honor of 1776 be revived? American families will give us this answer on November 2nd.
Brought to you by the editors and research staff of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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