Where Liberty Dwells, there is my country

While the Obama administration’s reaction to the Christmas Day underwear-bomber varies from a big yawn to try find a way to blame the Bush administration, it is import to review 2009–The Year In Terror. Here is a partial summary from–surpise–Time magazine. Even the Leftist media can’t sweep Islamic fundamentalist terrorism under the rug completely.

“There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.,”
warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terror-related
“events” on these shores since 9/11, and that 12 of those occurred in
2009. (See the top 10 inept terrorist plots.)

Some of the more noteworthy “events” of 2009:

• In January, Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island convert to Islam, plead
guilty to helping al-Qaeda in a plot to blow up a train in Penn Station.

• Late in 2008, Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-American college student from
Minneapolis, became the first American suicide bomber on record when
he killed 29 people in an attack in Somalia. Earlier in the year, the
FBI had revealed that at least 20 Somali-Americans from the
Minneapolis area had traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, a radical
militia tied to al-Qaeda. Five Somali-Americans are believed to have
died in fighting there this year, and Somali officials say at least
one more unnamed American citizen has become a suicide bomber on
behalf of al-Shabab. (See pictures of a Jihadist’s journey.)

• In June, Abdulhakim Muhammed, an Arkansas convert to Islam, was
accused of killing one soldier and wounding another in an attack at a
military recruitment center in Little Rock.

• In September, an Illinois man, Michael Finton, who converted to
Islam in prison, was accused of trying to blow up a Federal building
in Springfield.

• In October, David Coleman Headley, a Chicago businessman, was
arrested for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on a Danish
newspaper that had published controversial cartoons mocking the
Prophet Muhammed. (Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian resident of
Chicago was also arrested in connection with the same plot.) Headley
was later additionally charged with abetting the Mumbai terrorist
attack of November 2008. (Read “The Chicago Suspect: Are Pakistani
Jihadis Going Global?.”)

• In November, Maj. Nidal Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who
had grown up in the U.S., was accused of going on a shooting spree at
Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30. (Read “The FBI Probe: What Went
Wrong at Fort Hood?.”)

• Also in November, eight Somali-American men from Minnesota were
charged with terrorism-related counts involving al-Shabaab. Six other
had been charged previously. Most of the men were charged in absentia
because they remain in Somalia, along with dozens of Somali-Americans
who are believed to have joined the Qaeda-linked militia.

• And earlier this month, five men from the Washington, D.C., area
were detained in Pakistan, where local officials say they had been
trying to join the fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Ramy
Zamzam, said to be the leader of the group, is a Howard University
dental student; two others are sons of businessmen.

• Some other cases involve legal residents who are not U.S. citizens,
such as Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan suspect arrested in Denver and
charged with a plot to bomb targets in New York, and Jordanian Hosam
Smadi, arrested in Dallas, accused of trying blow up a skyscraper.
(Read “Three Key Questions About Zazi and Terrorism.”)

Terrorism experts and Muslim community leaders caution that the spurt
in such events doesn’t necessarily add up to a trend. For one thing,
the cases are unconnected. “Each case has its own special
circumstances,” says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.

Nor is there likely to be wide-scale extremism in the American Muslim
community. Jenkins points out that that there’s “no underground
network, and no deep reservoir of resentment.” Hooper notes that the
problem “is not coming from rhetoric within the community; it’s not
the case that young men are being radicalized in American mosques.”

Indeed, one of the lessons of 2009 is that the Internet can suffice as
a recruitment tool for extremists. From Smadi to the Virginia Five,
many of the men accused of terrorist-related activities in the past
year first made contact with jihadist groups online, officials say.
“More and more people are going online to find inspiration,” says
Danny Coulson, a former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI.

Jihadist recruiters have grown increasingly sophisticated in their use
of the Internet, and many of them specifically target American
audiences. Extremist e-preachers such as Anwar al-Awlaki, an American
living in Yemen who exchanged e-mails with Maj. Hasan, communicate in
English, which makes them more accessible to American Muslims.
Pakistani authorities believe the Virginia Five were recruited by a
man known as Saifullah, who communicated mainly through e-mails.

Not all jihadi recruiters want their American recruits to travel
abroad for training or to join existing groups. “They’ve figured out
that people who travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan or Somalia are
probably being watched by the authorities,” says Coulson. “So they’ll
just encourage you to act independently, without direct affiliation
with any group. That makes it harder for law enforcement.”

The good news: If recruiters can use the Internet, so too can U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Terrorism experts say U.S.
authorities have become much better at finding plotters online, and
putting them under surveillance. Smadi, for instance, was first
spotted on a jihadi website.

 

It is long past time for Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano to resign.  Obama should too.  Counting down the days until we can vote against Obama and his minions.  If there is not a successful attack, in a few weeks, the enhanced “security measures” will be muted.  People will forget about the threat, and the politically correct push to close Gitmo, and avoid “racial profiling” will be back in force.  The Left does not want to fight the war on terror, since it cuts against the Leftist agenda.  The Left does so only when it is forced to do so, temporarily, by al Qaeda.