Bush Stopped Domestic Terrorist Attacks; Obama Doesn't
I miss George W. Bush. There, I said it. I know one could come up with a list of his failures, including, arguably, the Iraq War. But for all of his problems, the Bush Administration kept us safe in America after 9/11. The Bush/Cheney team put into place all sorts of policies that kept the bad guys from doing harm.
Not that the bad guys didn't try. In a fascinating piece for the Heritage Foundation (Dailysignal.com, 6/14/16), David Inserra notes that the Orlando massacre was the 86th attack or attempted attack by radical Muslims in America since 9/11.
His piece even provides an instructive timeline with each of the attacks. I painstakingly went through each of the attempted attacks during the Bush years on Inserra's timeline, including the would-be attack on Fort Dix (2006) and on the New York subway (2006). Thankfully, each one of these is listed as, "Plot foiled, terrorist(s) apprehended."
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In short, Bush kept us safe. He got a lot of flak for it. But the facts speak for themselves.
When President Obama took over, he added a concern for the civil rights of the attackers.
And the results? About one attack a year.
During the Obama years, there have been the attacks on Fort Hood by a man who telegraphed to everyone that he had been radicalized. Thirteen Americans were killed by him. There was the Boston Marathon bombing. There was San Bernardino. And now Orlando. When does it stop?
A major new book shows how concern over the civil rights of the would-be attackers has greater merit to this administration apparently than does national security. The WND book is called See Something, Say Nothing, and it is by Phil Haney and Art Moore.
Phil Haney was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security. He got in trouble from his own agency for trying to connect dots that you're not allowed to connect.
For example, you can't say "Muslim" or "Islamic" and "terrorist" in the same sentence.
Haney said on my radio show, "I would suggest at this time the government's fear of political correctness — of being called an Islamaphobe — is much greater than the fear of an attack."
He added, "Whenever we hear that phrase, 'Islam is a religion of peace,' [we should add] 'just not right now.' [When] implementation of shariah law on a global level is finally accomplished, then, Islam really will be a religion of peace."
One could argue that the president's goal is to not alienate the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, the vast majority of whom are not going to kill others in acts of jihad. One could argue that his goal is allow us to work together with the "moderate Muslims" so we can together fight the extremist ones.
But there's something about the liberal mindset that is not willing to name the enemy — when the enemy is radical Muslims. If we can't even name the enemy, how then can we prevail?
Robert Spencer, director of jihadwatch.org, once told me how political correctness toward Islam makes us less safe. He mentioned the 2006 plot at Fort Dix, where the goal was to kill many Americans.
This plot was foiled because a young clerk at a VHS-to-DVD transfer store dared to speak up after he noticed disturbing footage.
Spencer says: "But there is one very telling aspect of this story, and that was that the young man immediately went to his supervisor and said, 'I'm very disturbed by what I'm seeing on these VHS tapes, but I don't want to be a racist or anything.' He had so imbibed the pop-culture view that to oppose jihad is racist that he was actually hesitating about reporting these jihadists."
The day after the Orlando massacre, the president spoke about it with no mention of Islam.
A week after the Orlando shooting Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that transcripts from the Orlando shooting will not include the shooter's own pledges to Islamic state. When he said, "Praise be to Allah," that has now been changed to "Praise be to God." Thus, the nexus to Islam will be whitewashed out of the picture. Thankfully, they reversed this policy under pressure.
Art Moore, news editor for WND.com, co-wrote the book with Phil Haney. He said on my radio show, "Critics from the left need to be asked a simple question: 'Under what system would you want to live — the U.S. Constitution or Islamic law?'"
This is why I miss George W. Bush. Even though he was constantly saying, "Islam is a religion of peace," at least he was working hard to keep us safe from those Islamists who kept disproving his mantra. The Bush Administration's actions were better than their rhetoric. Sadly, the Obama Administration's actions are just as weak as their rhetoric.
