The fourteen victims killed and 21 injured in the December 2nd massacre at a San Bernardino, California Christmas Party by two ISIS-inspired Muslim radicals have been honored by the truth declared by FBI director James Comey that it was an act of domestic terrorism. The eight men and six women slain in this act of Islamic terrorism ranged in age from 26 to 60.

This act of domestic terrorism was perpetrated by a colleague, self radicalized Muslim and U.S. born citizen Syed Razwin Farooq and his Pakistani-born, Saudi raised wife, Tashfeen Malik. The pair had tried to destroy cell phones and  computer drives. Nevertheless,  FBI forensic investigations uncovered a pledge of  fealty to the self styled founder of the barbarous Islamic State, Abu-Bakr al- Baghdadi.  That puts to rest the initial White House and media message that the assault was “workplace violence- related”. Was this equivalent to akin to the U.S. Amy declaration after the November 2009 Fort Hood Jihad massacre by convicted killer, Major Nidal Hassan?

Some elements of the media presumed that the slaughter of the innocents was triggered by an exchange between Muslim Syed Razwin Farooq and a fellow Department of Public Health restaurant inspector, Nicholas Thalasinos, a Messianic Jew. It was alleged that Thalasinos had contested the views that Islam was a religion of peace and vigorously defended Israel. That despite another victim in this terrorist attack was a Assyrian Christian woman Bennetta Betbadal who had fled the religious tyranny of Shia Iran for sanctuary in the U.S.  The most  disconcerting aspect of the media’s view was the CNN interview by Gary Tuchman with Thalasinos’ grief stricken widow, Jennifer.

Tuchman was endeavoring to place partial blame for Farook-Malik’s deadly attack that killed her husband and his colleagues. Thalasinos, a committed Zionist, allegedly had a “heated, passionate conversation” about politics and religion with the gunman days before the shooting. That might had triggered Farook’s abrupt departure from the Christmas party gathering, only to return with his wife wantonly killing 14 and injuring 21.   Police called to assist the wounded and survivors depicted it as a charnel house scene.   Rabbi Eric Tokajer, editor of The Messianic Times, said, that in preparation for an article, “Remembering  Nicholas Thalasinos” his widow Florence  said  that the Tuchman CNN interview aired only a fraction of the disconcerting questions  directed at her late husband.

Watch the CNN Gary Tuchman Anderson 360 interview with Jennifer Thalasinos:

In 1918 U.S. Senator Hiram Warren Johnson was purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

That is self-evident in the so-called man made war of no name propounded over the past 7 years by the Obama Administration.  President Obama endeavored to pre-empt the news of the San Bernardino massacre by suggesting this was a mass shooting like Sandy Springs in Connecticut or the Aurora, Colorado movie theater episode. The San Bernardino massacre occurred within a few weeks of the Paris Massacre by ISIS European Muslim operatives.  It was contended that access to guns in this latest mass shooting necessitated immediate Congressional actions on new federal controls.  California has one of the nation’s strictest gun laws.  Where the sales of the weapons used were legally purchased?  Were they subsequently modified for deadly use in the rampage?   It was left to the dogged professional investigations of the FBI and its forensic laboratory to uncover the truth. That Farook Malik were adhering to fundamental Qur’anic doctrine.

Last night I attended erev Shabbat services at a small reform congregation, Temple Beth Shalom, to listen to a brilliant exposition by Dr. Mark H. Elovitz. Dr. Elovitz is the Director of the Centre for Strategic Politics.  Elovitz lectures on world affairs and geopolitical issues.  He has a multifaceted background as an ordained Rabbi, former USAF chaplain, professor of law and TV world affairs anchor and commentator.

His talk following services illuminated the ancient ethnic religious sectarian fissures in the complex Middle East confronting Israel; the intractable Syrian conflict and the rise of ISIS. For his temple audience he dissected the various contending ethnicities among the Turks, Persians, Arabs and Kurds.  Further confounding the resolution to combat ISIS with the aid of Sunni allies in the region, he noted there was little difference between Saudi Wahhabism and the Salafist doctrine of the Islamic State. He elucidated how Shiism of Iran and the Alawite sect of Assad in Syria was viewed as idolatrous by Sunnis further exacerbating already inflammatory ethnic hatreds.  At one point in his talk he drew the audience’s attention to Sura 8:12 in the Qur’an that fixed in the minds of his listeners the basis for Islamic terrorism:  “I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger.”

The announcement by FBI director Comey underlines the myopia of the President and his National Security Staff on the threat of extremist Islam, the unnamed elephant in the room.  The President retreated from public view immediately following FBI Director Comey’s declaration of domestic terrorism.  He refrained from the President’s traditional role following terrorist events resolving to combat these threats to our collective safety and security.

San Bernardino is a defining moment as it forces the nation to question tolerance of Political Islam, both at home and abroad. It should  also  question the intentions of alleged American Muslim ‘civil rights’ groups like CAIR, who rushed to judgment suggesting that Farook-Malik  were extremists and not part of mainstream Islamic beliefs. It also should question the press conference convened by lawyers for the family of the perpetrators of this heinous crime. They went to extraordinary lengths disputing the evidence of the FBI. They suggested the grandmother of Farook, who lived in the home caring for their six month old baby, knew nothing of the enormous quantities of weapons, ammunitions and pipe bomb IEDs being manufactured in the garage.

There are issues beyond the findings by the FBI of terrorism that are concerning.  Farook went to Saudi Arabia to bring back Ms. Malik to become his fiancée under a K-1 Visa, receiving an immediate green card, without any vetting. There were indications of cell calls made to persons of interest both domestically and internationally involved with extremist Islamist groups. That raises the wisdom of Congress succumbing to both libertarian and civil rights protests about the purported intrusion of privacy under the meta-data collection programs of the NSA, maligned by Snowden and even some Presidential hopefuls.  Without the phone meta-data, national and regional counterterrorism   echelons in this country cannot compile evidence of social networking among political Islamists that might have prevented the 12/2 San Bernardino massacre.  Then there was the abandonment of community profiling programs monitoring local mosques by major metropolitan police departments such as in New York. In France under its counterterrorism program, surveillances of Mosques is far more intrusive to the point of recording Mosque sermons.  It is now time for Congress to correct the errors of its ways and protect us before another ISIS – inspired domestic terrorist event results in deaths and injuries to innocent civilians. Especially protecting soft target venues like malls, movie theaters and office buildings. As the expression goes, perhaps the truth provided by the FBI will make us free to define the threat of Islamic terrorism and resolve to combat it both at home and abroad.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.