Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center wrote a truly reflective article below, one professionals in law enforcement, threat assessment, and counter-terrorism fields will study, and elected officials should.

We are not ready. 

We as a nation simply are still not ready to face the truly ugly tenants of Islam that clearly teaches and applauds the attacks seen in Paris and San Bernardino.  We are not ready to accept that jihadists have been traveling into America for a number of years now, through southern borders many elected officials love to proclaim secure and so very closely monitored.  The “official/unofficial” policy of the current national administration and its’ many departments and agencies is that Islamic Terrorism does not exist, much less here in America.  If you mean a defined army in dedicated assaults much like WWII or Korea, and partially in Vietnam, I would agree.  But covert operations, special small teams, even individuals dedicated to carry-out atrocities against the Great Satan (America) are far more difficult to defend against.  People embedded in our neighborhoods that we see at the local park or grocery store, or work at the same factory, business complex or Walmart who, in reality, are terrorists hiding in plain site is what is here now, and still coming.

Adding to the complexity is that the Islamic State has been encouraging jihadist world-wide to act on their own, not to travel to Syria to practice jihad or receive training.  Islamic followers so already inclined can launch attacks where they live, and select their own targets.  ISIS will provide online and covert training, instructions on IEDs, and even financing.  An example is this latest attack where the couple amassed sophisticated equipment, weaponry, well over 5,000 rounds of ammo, and at least 15 pipe bombs with triggering capacity.  Add to this their tactical gear, belts capable of carrying extra implements, and Go cameras to record their successful Jihad, plus a detailed plan to carry-out their heinous actions.  Counter-terrorism, threat assessment, and law enforcement on the front lines know all this; yet, elected officials in varied offices work terribly hard to use soft and denying language to dispel the reality that America is under a massive assault that will not be disappearing any time soon.

The threat is here in our communities, and it is quite real. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

When the Redlands Tea Party Patriots objected to the resettling of Syrian Muslim migrants in their community, CAIR accused them of “paranoia and phobia is rooted in a combination of ignorance and bigotry.”

But  “paranoia and phobia”  are the modern condition that the free world has found itself living in. Islamic terrorism can strike anytime  and  anywhere  from  a  Paris  concert  hall to a San Bernardino County facility where disabled children were being helped. Its ignorance to ignore that and bigotry to defend it. “What will be done to ensure the safety of our community?  Our biggest concern is the safety of our family, our children  and  our  grandchildren,”  Victoria  Hargrave  of  Redlands    Townhall had asked.

It was a good question. As the country watched police charge towards a home in the Redlands, it has become an even better question.  The shooter, Sayeed Farouk, was described by his father as a religiously devout Muslim. “He was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back.”  Neighbors say that he “grew a beard and started to wear religious clothing.  The long shirt that’s like a dress and the cap on his head.”  And at some point his “religiosity” took him down the familiar path of Jihad.  Neighbors knew something was wrong, but were afraid that they would be accused of Islamophobia if they reported it. Officially the motive of this religiously devout Muslim couple in carrying out a terrorist attack is still unknown. The evolving media narrative is that familiar standby of “workplace violence”. The sort of workplace violence involving an attack by multiple terrorists wearing body armor and throwing pipe bombs shortly after an argument at a party.

If you believe this version of the  “workplace violence”  story, the shooter stormed out of a party and 20 minutes later had managed to round up multiple heavily armed attackers to avenge his party argument.

It’s certainly a story. Even if it isn’t a very good story. And yet it’s a story that we keep hearing over and over again.  It begins with lies and ends with body bags.  Everything possible was done to deny Nidal Hassan’s terrorist motivations in the Fort Hood Massacre.   His attack was deemed workplace violence.   Even his own attempts to explain that he supported the terrorists were shut down so that he was reduced to smuggling messages to get his story out.  And despite multiple statements by Hassan that he was a terrorist, the official story is still workplace violence.   Right after the shooting, it was some strain of airborne PTSD that had somehow transmitted itself from American veterans to the Muslim employee who had never seen combat until he began killing them.

There are always excuses.

The Times Square bomber had financial issues.   The Tsarnaev terrorists were poorly adjusted. Once the media digs into Farouk’s life, it will no doubt find that he had financial issues, was poorly adjusted and may have even been suffering from some mysterious form of airborne PTSD.  Obama and the media would like to make this story about “gun violence”.   But guns don’t shoot themselves.   There is a hand that pulls the trigger and a mind whose foul purposes that hand serves.  Gun violence is not a mechanical problem.   It is not a hardware problem of guns going off at random.   It is not a biological problem of fingers randomly twitching on triggers. It is a problem of the mind.  Behind each massacre, there is a mind. And it is that mind, its ideas and its beliefs, that kills.

San Bernardino is home to what is described as a “growing Muslim population” and that growth comes with terrifying growing pains.  This latest attack appears to be one of them.  It’s a matter of simple math that as the population most likely to commit terrorist acts increases, so do the acts themselves.

Two months ago, Marilyn Snyder of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots wrote of “the runners and spectators of the Boston Marathon who never imagined that refugee jihadists were stealthily plotting their demise — just because they were not Muslims.”  Most people in San Bernardino County did not expect that anyone was plotting to kill them. They did not think that one evening the events from far-off France would suddenly be taking place where they lived.  And yet that is the new reality.  Islamic terrorism can strike anywhere and everywhere.  “While it is impossible to prevent death delivered by madmen who kill because of religious extremism, it is possible to put in place federal policies that limit the influx of Muslim extremists through the wide-open refugee doors of the Obama administration,” Marilyn wrote.  That remains true.

Sayeed Farouk, like Nidal Hassan, did not suddenly fly over here from Syria. But that only makes it more vital that we prevent the next attack and the next massacre by closing the doors and keeping our country safe.

We cannot bring back the dead, the victims of the long horrifying roll of Islamic terror that stretches back for thousands of years, but we can protect the living.  The left approaches this as a mechanical problem, but it’s an ideological problem. It’s a conflict between two sets of ideas and two sets of worldviews. It is a war between those who believe that men must be ruled by the dead will of Mohammed and his brutal successors and those of us who believe in the freedom of our founding documents and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  It is not a war that we will win through appeasement or disarmament. And we can begin to fight back by protecting ourselves and our country.  “We Redlanders and all Americans need to stand up with “common sense and judgment” with an emphatic “No!” to Syrian refugee resettlement. It’s time to bar the doors against jihadi infiltration,” Marilyn wrote.  From Redland to Paris, it’s time that we did the right thing, for our towns, our cities and our country.

ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

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