Willful Blindness And Orlando
Orlando. Once a name associated with mouse ears, orange groves and the NBA Magic will forever be known for a terrorist attack that was both breathtakingly predictable and incredibly tragic.
Shamefully, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and yes, even Donald Trump, all went political in the news cycle before the tears of the victim’s families had even stopped falling. But that is the nature of the 21st century instant media world that we live in, where the first to set the narrative controls the debate, regardless of facts or even a basic sense of decency.
The questions that keeps radiating in my mind is how did someone who was on the FBI watch list keep employed by a federal security contractor? How did someone who two high school classmates allege cheered the attacks on 9/11 ever pass a background check to get a security job in the first place? And how can the willfully blind political left in the U.S. continue to ignore the evidence set brutally before them about the dangers inherent in radical Islam?
The first two questions will be answered through various inquiries and just as the shoe-bomber has left a legacy of everyone taking off their shoes to go on an airplane, there will undoubtedly be some response that inconveniences everyone but an actual terrorist.
But it is the third question that actually matters moving forward as a nation.
The new ideology of the left is built around a seeming unwritten hierarchy of victimhood built around race, gender and sexual preference.
Since 9/11, however, the left has seemingly raced to embrace followers of Islam as victims too, as the fear that this religious group may face some special persecution runs rampant, accelerating with every terrorist act and perpetuated by the media cautions against jumping to conclusions.
So it was not surprising that when another jihadist chose to enter an Orlando night club with the intent to kill as many gay partiers as possible that the left went blind to what everyone else can clearly see.
Their default, of course, was to caution against blaming all of Islam for the actions of one mad man, and to instead blame all of America’s gun owners for those very same actions.
What is particularly alarming is that this predictable blind spot is being built into the very government agencies that are supposed to protect us according to Department of Homeland Security whistle blower Philip Haney, an agent for DHS since its founding. In his just released book, “See Something, Say Nothing,” Haney details how references to Islam are being wiped from the investigative records so those seeking to track terrorist networks get dead ended when trying to follow their bread crumbs.
This willful decision to play see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil with our nation’s internal security is the natural outgrowth of the new left’s increasing unwillingness to deal with unpleasant realities. How did they miss the videos of gays being thrown off buildings to their death by Islamic State? They didn’t, they merely deluded themselves into believing that Islamic State doesn’t represent a vibrant, accepted philosophy within Islam.
In a very real respect, it is the blinding or our intelligence agency’s to the role Islam itself plays in these terrorist networks that allows these very networks to grow, and the true miracle is that Orlando, San Bernardino, Fort Hood and Boston are still anomalies rather than the norm.
What is ironic is when we refuse to follow these bread crumbs of truth, all Muslims get blamed by the American citizenry for the actions of those who have been radicalized. Whether the radicalization happened through an Islamic school in Pakistan, or a mosque, or prison in the U.S. or the Internet does not matter, what is important is that the left and our government return to dealing with the root causes of these attacks honestly.
Ultimately, it is through following and ripping the terrorist networks within Islam out by the roots that those who choose to peacefully follow the religion will achieve the acceptance that they are seeking.
Our nation must defend itself and its people from terrorist attacks, and we cannot win that war if we refuse to understand the motivations of those who hate us so deeply. It’s time to take both the blinders and the gloves off, and get back to the very serious business of uprooting the domestic network that threatens us, engaging in exhaustive checks of those who come from nations determined to harm us, and secure our borders to stop those who find it easier to embed through illegally entering the country.
Orlando. May America wake up from our suicidal blindness out of your suffering.
By Rick Manning Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Orlando Takes Its Place On A Grim List
In the minutes before opening fire at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., shooter Omar Mateen called 911 and told an operator that he was pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. But investigators still don’t know what kind of link — if any — he may actually have had to the group.
The horrific shooting that killed at least 50 and wounded 53 more is the worst shooting in U.S. history and the bloodiest terror attack at home since 9/11. It’s also the third time a pledge to the terrorist group has been invoked to justify an attack within the United States. The first was came in May 2015 when a gunman sent out a series of Twitter messages just before opening fire on a cartoon exhibit featuring images of the Prophet Muhammad in Texas. Next came a December attack in San Bernardino, Calif., by a married couple who posted their oath of allegiance on Facebook before gunning down 14 people.
ISIS? Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “knows if he calls for terror it will come,” author Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told FP’s Molly O’Toole and Dan De Luce. “He doesn’t need any direct human connection or even a web connection. His message is so pervasive in the media and so simple it is certain to inspire the angry.”
The Islamic State quickly claimed credit for the attack in Orlando, with its al-Bayan Radio describing him Monday as “one of the soldiers” of its self-described caliphate. But according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks terrorist activity online, neither the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news site nor al-Bayan indicates there was coordination with the ISIS prior to the attack.
Numbers. The scale of the attack, bluntly: “Before the attack in Orlando on Sunday, 45 people in the United States had died in jihadist terrorist attacks since 9/11, according to a database maintained by the New America, a Washington think tank. The think tank added 50 more deaths to its database Sunday because of the attacks in Orlando.”
Libyan militias smash ISIS. Forces loyal to the internationally-recognized Libyan government continue to batter Islamic State fighters in the coastal city of Sirte, and have taken back much from the city from the terrorist group — including the port. The relatively swift series of victories in recent weeks along the Libyan coast came after militias from the city of Misrata, which is between Tripoli and Sirte, pledged their loyalty to the government, and began pushing toward the Islamic State’s stronghold.
Officials in Washington have estimated there to be as many as 5,000 ISIS fighters in Libya, but the pro-government Libyan have been bolstered by the support of special operations forces from the U.S., France and the U.K. While the fighting was street-to-street over the weekend in Sirte, officials in Libya have estimated there to be about 30,000 civilian left inside the city. No word yet on civilian casualties.
