Every sign points to an aggressive escalation of ISIS-inspired violence against European cities and American citizens, not to mention the American homeland, yet President Barack Obama sees “no existential threat” from radical Islam.
He apparently has bigger worries, such as how to close Gitmo and shut down the FBI investigation of his chosen successor.
This week, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, and the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Steve Emerson, published a dire warning. However we may define “existential threat,” our nation is in great danger from the combination of the global reach of the jihadists’ murderous capabilities and the lack of any plan or strategy to defend against those escalating threats.
Another security expert warns that ISIS is seeking nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and nothing is “off the table” for them.
- A bill in Congress to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization has fewer than 100 sponsors and is deemed too controversial by Republican leaders.
- Proposals to suspend refugee resettlement from Syria because the FBI and Homeland Security admit there is no way to effectively screen out jihadists are abandoned by Republican leaders because Democrats oppose them.
- Our 5,000 miles of land borders remain open to illegal entry, and Border Patrol apprehensions of persons from Islamic nations are increasing.
- Over 15 years after Congress demanded it be done, we still have no way to know if and when the 140 million foreign nationals who enter our country each year leave the country when their visas expire.
- We continue to welcome over 100,000 foreign students from Muslim nations without any effective means of denying visas to jihadists among them.
- The FBI is being denied the resources to monitor the movements and activities of suspected jihadists already living in our communities.
These are not the marks of a people or a nation serious about protecting America from Islamist plans for our destruction. They are the symptoms of a nation in deep denial.
Our President cannot even utter the words “radical Islam,” and our State Department is even censoring the translations of speeches by European leaders if they stray into politically incorrect language. “Islamist terrorists” is forbidden terminology even for foreign statesman whose citizens have been slaughtered by — by whom, by “extremists” and “maladjusted migrants?”
We have to admit it is not just Barack Obama who stands in the way of an effective counter strategy against radical Islam. Even with a new president in the White House, serious obstacles will remain.
- Our mainline religious institutions, most of our universities and about 100 percent of our mass media care more about being politically correct than about keeping America safe.
- Half our nation believes Islam is a “religion of peace” and it’s only a small minority of “self-radicalized” extremists who are the problem.
- There seems to be no awareness that even if only 1 percent of Muslims now living in the U.S. are willing to engage in violent activities, in a U.S. population of over four million Muslims that is 40,000 potential jihadists already living among us.
- We continue to issue building permits for new mosques and watch helplessly as new enclaves dedicated to Sharia grow in a dozen states.
Maybe if two dozen black-uniformed jihadist warriors appear on Martha’s Vineyard and wreck mayhem during one of Obama’s frequent family vacations, perhaps then our leaders will awaken to the realities of “asymmetrical warfare” waged by an enemy who has only contempt for the Geneva Convention.
The problem here is not that the Islamist enemy is invincible; the problem is that the depth of our complacency seems bottomless.
After each new Islamist atrocity such as the November attack in San Bernardino, we react with shock and alarm– but nothing changes. We learned after San Bernardino that the State Department bureaucrat who looked at the woman’s background before approving her visa did not notice that the address she listed for her home in Pakistan was a vacant lot. And yet we trust this same system to spot jihadists among refugees whose homes have been destroyed in six-year civil war?
Efforts to suspend the dangerously broken refugee program are greeted by cries of “Islamophobia!” by the enforcers of political correctness. Such tactics may delay the day of reckoning, but that day will come soon nonetheless.
Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC.
Tom represented Colorado’s sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, and he is a former presidential candidate.
He is the author of In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.
