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Enemies Within - Part II
by
Gerald L. Atkinson
1 April 2002
In a previous essay, I described a 'diaspora' of Americans who alienated themselves from our nation's traditions and history. This alienation became generational with the counter-culture revolution of the mid-1960s and 70s. The radicals of the Boomer generation influenced the elites of that generation to view America as an oppressive state without authority to impose Western thought, traditions, and principles on them - or on generations succeeding them. Then, in the 1990s, those same radical elites of the counter-culture revolution became the power elites - as their generation elected their icons, the Clintons, into executive power.
These modern liberals and their supporters (primarily the voters in the 'blue' portion of the 'red-blue' year-2000 presidential election map), approximately 50 percent of the voting population, have been the vast sea within which the 'terrorists' of the '60s and '70s swam - undetected. Members of the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers - many who committed crimes, including murder, in carrying out their terrorist activities were not apprehended until decades later. Kathleen Soliah, Katherine Ann Powers, Emily Harris, Elizabeth Anna Duke, Leo Frederick Burt, and Stephen Bingham are recent examples of this fact. Why were they not apprehended for their crimes for such a long time? Because, as the ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, tells us - the terrorist 'fish' swims in a great sea of those who sympathize with his revolutionary guerilla goals. I have chosen to label these 'vast seas' our enemies within. In the May/June 2002 issue I described the indigenous component of our enemies within - the power elites of the Boomer generation. This group is the most powerful component of America's enemies within. They are the driving force behind our nation's inability to deal with other groups of enemies within - those foreign nationals who 'swim' within the diaspora of their own ethnic, religious, and cultural peoples residing here as American citizens.
Our indigenous 'enemies within' are primarily responsible for hindering our efforts to protect ourselves from the terrorists who planned and executed the 9-11 terrorist attacks on America. Immediately after these dastardly attacks, our nation's major newspapers were awash with articles reminding us of our sordid past when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, we interred 'Japanese-Americans' in relocation camps. Our modern liberals cried to high heaven that this was a disgraceful and shameless act.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, a former internee, implemented a policy that forbade airport screening personnel from using key factors such as sex, language and national origin in their efforts to identify potential terrorists. Mr. Mineta presumably opposes the use of group scrutiny because as a child he was sent 'along with the rest of his 'Japanese-American family' to a relocation camp during World War II. In a speech on 12 October 2002 at the University of Rochester, he dwelled on his concern about scrutinizing young male Arab passengers rather than about the safety of crew and other passengers. This led to the absurdity of random airport searches of senior citizens, young mothers with babies, and, yes, uniformed military personnel.
Mineta's reaction to the need to 'profile' the enemy - Middle Eastern and East Asian Islamic fundamentalists - was presaged by Greg Robinson in a book published in 2001. This book asserted a President Franklin D. Roosevelt's racial prejudice toward the Japanese as a reason for his Executive Order 9066 authorizing the expulsion of 112,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the West Coast, seventy percent of whom went to barbed-wire enclosures patrolled by armed guards. The author asserts that Roosevelt "…sought reasons to incarcerate thousands of innocent people, overruled advisers who recommended against it and - for partisan political reasons - refused to begin closing the camps until six months after the 1944 elections, when the West Coast had long ceased to be a military theatre of operations." The book reviewer cautions that "…There's a warning here for our own time, as we shift to a wartime footing and rush to enact what may seem to be eminently reasonable security measures that come at little apparent sacrifice of personal freedoms. The choices we make may not be controversial either - until our children see what we have done and judge us accordingly."
This book may have influenced some modern liberals on the issue of 'racial/ethnic profiling' in our nations defense against terrorism at home. Alan Colmes, the modern liberal on the Fox News program, 'Hannity and Colmes,' was heard angrily chastising President Roosevelt for his racial prejudice in 'profiling' the Japanese by his issuance of the executive order. His railing against the WWII hero of his political party of choice, the Democrat party, was an unusual tirade in the aftermath of Bill Clinton. Holmes was one of Clinton's staunchest public defenders during the impeachment process in 1998-99.
This politically correct view of the world and our place in it is contradicted by the facts. Indeed, after the attack on Pearl Harbor there was widespread fear that the West Coast would be attacked by the Japanese. Indeed, there were sightings of Japanese submarines off the coast and "…[the Japanese] took…six civilian lives in the 48 contiguous states of that day (all of them victims of a single balloon-borne Japanese fire bomb that exploded in south central Oregon on May 5, 1945."
William J. Hopwood rebuts Mineta and his anti-profiling minions in the case of the Japanese interment camps. First, he sets the record straight on Mineta's childhood history. "In 1942 [Mineta] was the 11-year-old child of Japanese nationals (not Japanese-Americans), who, under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 (which is still in effect) were subject to detention in time of war. His parents and others similarly situated were evacuated from the West coast because our World War II government had obtained intelligence by decoding Japanese diplomatic messages that revealed the existence of espionage and the potential for sabotage involving both resident aliens and citizens within the Japanese community."
Hopwood continues, "In light of such evidence, President Roosevelt, not one to hesitate when national security was at stake, issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the evacuation from military areas of 'any or all persons' considered to be potential security risks. At the time, 60% of the adults affected by the order were Japanese enemy aliens and two-thirds of the American citizens of Japanese ancestry affected were, as was Norman Mineta, the minor children of enemy aliens."
"Ethnic Japanese who were not living in the specified military areas (some 10,000) were not affected by the order at all. As the Supreme Court later stated in its wartime Korematsu decision upholding the government's action (a decision that stands to this day): 'There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some…the need for action was great, and time was short.'"
Hopwood reaches a reasoned conclusion. "We now face a situation involving resident Muslims that is not entirely unlike the situation our country faced in World War II with residents of Japanese ancestry. In that earlier time, our country's leaders took prompt and decisive action with the result that threatened acts of sabotage did not occur. To be as successful in our present war against terrorism, we must not allow common sense security measures to be subverted by those among us [our indigenous 'enemies within'] who would play Russian roulette with the nation's defense for the sake of political correctness."
I, the editor of this journal, have had personal experience with this phenomenon. Two of my eleven grandchildren are teenagers who attend high school in a very well-respected public school district. Their instruction in the sciences, English, languages, and team sports is exceptional. But, even there, one finds (if one is inquisitive enough to read their text books, homework assignments, and other materials) that extreme political correctness dominates their social studies and Language Arts. In the latter course, both of these grandchildren were tasked (two years apart) with the same assignment (from two different teachers). The assignment was to write an essay containing the answers to certain questions (the same questions - teacher generated - each time around) about World War II obtained from family members who might have been alive during those years.
I was a prime interviewee. At ten years of age when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, I was fourteen when the war ended - ages at which the emotional impact of the war was highest and a youngster's fascination with the war's events was at a peak. I could remember the movie newsreels which showed Japanese soldiers bayoneting Chinese babies in practice exercises. I could remember the barbaric treatment of our prisoners of war and the viciousness in which the Japanese soldier fought. I could remember the fanatic Japanese kamikazi (suicide) attacks on our aircraft carriers in the Battle of the Pacific. And I could feel the fear that was resident in the American psyche that our homeland might be attacked in the early days of the war. And, most importantly, as a child at a very impressionable age, I could sense the dread that the adults felt in considering the eventuality of a defeat by the barbaric Japanese. It was, indeed, a war for the America' survival - and our own with it.
As it turned out, I was also an observer with direct practical experience with the content of the questions posed (by the teachers). And those questions were vividly revealing of the mind-set and agenda of the teachers who taught the course. Of the 13 questions posed, nearly half dealt with the (you guessed it) 'isms' that are so important to the modern liberal. Racism toward both blacks and Japanese, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the terrible internment of Japanese-Americans in prison camps in the U.S., and other associated 'isms' of which America is today to be ashamed. And, tellingly, the questions were posed in the form of "How did you FEEL about?' Not what did you 'think' about.' Nor what did I 'believe' about? The central framework of the essay questions posed was the ubiquitous New Age, how did you FEEL?
To most of the questions (right out of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory approach), I was able to relate how it felt to be in a war in which your own personal freedom, life and nation's survival were at stake. One does not have a true sense of the primordial human reaction to a situation in which one's survival is at stake unless one has experienced such a situation. It is akin to facing down a man-eating beast in the wild with only one's instincts, intelligence, and bare hands at ones disposal. In that state, all other considerations of life are beneath consideration. Everything else is irrelevant. Consequently, the answers were rationally arrived at and easily given.
Indeed, there was very little public discourse on the subject of racism. Everyone was in the same boat. Everyone was focused on winning the war with an external enemy who threatened our very existence. Blacks fought as well and diligently as whites. Japanese-American Nisii troops fought as gallantly as blacks and whites in the prosecution of the war - and under their own circumstances of the times. Any differences of opinion on the matters of race and/or ethnicity would be worked out after we WON the war - together, against a common enemy. There was absolutely no disagreement or controversy about using the atom bombs - they would save the lives of thousands of family friends and relatives who were ready to invade Japan in a fight to the last man.
The question of the internment of Japanese-Americans was a matter with which I, as a youngster in a farming community, had direct and personal experience. I knew and worked among Japanese managers and laborers on a muck farm in Michigan. We white youngsters would climb aboard a stake truck in town at six o'clock in the morning, travel about ten miles to the fields, work 'til dark, and then return via the same mode to town. We worked for 35 cents per hour and were supervised by and worked alongside - you guessed it - Japanese who were 'interned' on the farm. Not one person that I knew felt the least bit of animosity or distaste toward them. They were hard workers and decent supervisors. If anyone was at the bottom of the 'self respect' totem pole, it was we who were working at the lowest rung for 'peanut' wages. But we didn't know any better - and we loved it. I also remember graduating from high school with a Japanese 'internee,' Richard Tanaka. He was treated as well as the rest of us and we got along well. He was a better student than most of us.
Later in my life, when the Navy sent me to the University of Michigan for a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, we lived next door to a Japanese-American couple with three young children - the same age as ours. They played together and became close friends, as did my wife and I with their parents. They met in a Japanese internment camp, married, took advantage of America's opportunity and Bill Higuchi earned a doctorate and became a professor at the U of M. I am certain that the Higuchi family is as grateful as my family is for the opportunity America - and only America - afforded us, despite the different paths traveled. They certainly harbor no animosity, nor resentment, about being a part of America's caution during the World War II years when Japanese nationalism attempted to subjugate American freedom.
It was clear after my grandchildren interviewers digested the content of their interviews with me that they had not received from their teachers the same context with respect to the question material as was given by someone who had actually lived through the experience. It was very clear that the historical record being taught in the Language Arts class was far different than the 'lived experience' of those of us who had lived it. This is a sad commentary on what our public schools have become - even the good ones - over the past several decades. Indeed, our indigenous 'enemies within' have set the stage, even with our teenagers, for a negative public reaction to our nation's common sense attempt to use all of the reasonable tools available, including 'profiling' to defend against Islamic terrorist attacks at home.
In the meantime, political correctness prevails. Paul Craig Roberts reports that Maneta, a Clinton-era holdover, has made a trip to the airport more painful than a trip to the dentist. "All over the country, American citizens, who fit no terrorist profile, are being patted down in long airport security lines, their luggage rifled. Young mothers with children, elderly couples, even flight attendants and pilots are searched. It is mindless and pointless. If an airline pilot wants to hijack his airliner, he doesn't need a weapon…Instead of profiling young Muslim males, [Maneta] is profiling everyone else."
The power elites of the Boomer generation, under the executive power of the Clinton administration, did everything in their power to promote the idea that America had shamefully treated Japanese-Americans during World War II. For example, President Clinton presented the Medal of Honor to George T. Sakato and 21 other Asian American veterans at a White House ceremony on 21 June 2000. During this politically motivated move, Clinton said, "Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people so ill treated."
The modern liberal press went ga-ga over this belated politically-motivated effort to remind America of the 'shame' of its treatment of minorities during World War II. The Washington Post trumpets the line, "…seven are among 22 Asian-Americans, most of Japanese descent, who fought heroically during World War II as their relatives endured prejudice, even internment, back home…'They rose above any sense of personal injustice to sacrifice all that they held dear in order to keep our country strong,' Army Secretary Louis Caldera said before the Arlington ceremony in their honor.
The multiculturalist Clinton Army Secretary had reviewed more than 100 instances in which the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest medal, was given to Asian-Americans. One recipient, who was originally awarded the Silver Star, was upgraded to Medal of Honor status. The brazen political motivation for upgrading lower medal awards to the highest award in the land was not addressed in the liberal mass media. It was one of the recipients who let the truth out of the bag. "'We had to prove our loyalty to America, so we had to fight,' said [George T. Sakato]. To this day, however, Sakato finds it difficult to blame the United States for its anti-Japanese sentiment, triggered by the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. 'People say that you don't have discrimination, but that's impossible. I'm kind of prejudiced myself,' he said." Another belated honoree, Rudolph Davila, who single-handedly protected a company of 130 men caught in open fire by Germans at Artena, Italy, said he "…did not feel slighted by the racism of the time and desired only to accomplish the tasks, however brutal, at hand. 'I didn't think about it at all,' he said, 'and I didn't know our job was above and beyond the call of duty - I just did it.'"
Paul Craig Roberts sees similar overreaction to the response to John Walker Lindh. "Taliban John's problem is not treason. He is ashamed, or, more likely, afraid of being white. He learned from mainstream university culture that to be white is to be evil, hegemonic, racist, sexist, homophobic, exploitative, oppressive. Unsettled by the demonization of whites and the future that demonization implies, he opted out and became a Muslim."
In line with our indigenous 'enemies within,' "Fear of being white is a new but growing malady. Rachel Toor, an admissions officer at Duke University wrote in her recently published book that she is 'ashamed of her whiteness.'"
"Extreme racist criticism of whites as the font of all evil has made many younger whites uneasy with their skin color. In a café recently, I overheard two young women giving a third fits for hanging out with minorities. Forced to explain herself, she said she didn't want to have white children."
"If we need a catharsis of convicting someone for treason, charges should be brought against Hanoi Jane Fonda or Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. The American public responded to Miss Fonda's treason by flocking to her movies and purchasing her exercise videos. Mr. Ayers was rewarded with a professorship at the University of Illinois. Ms. Dohrn runs the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. It somehow doesn't seem [right] just to shoot John Walker."
Farrukh Dhondy, a writer living in England, gets it right in an article in the Wall Street Journal. "It didn't start with the Marin County Talib [John Walker Lindh]. In Britain and other parts of the West, Islamic militants take advantage of a liberal society to spread doctrines of hate…Mohammad Junaid, after Sept. 11, ditched his $70,000-a-year job as a computer techie and joined the Taliban to 'Kill Americans.' He did so to the cheers of his mother, who, astonishingly, had been rescued from the World Trade Center."
Dhondy writes, "We may not have many John Walkers, but how many Junaids does the U.S. harbor? Britain's experience with its Muslims suggests that the number may be high. The Muslim migration to Britain, chiefly from Pakistan, began more than 30 years ago. The immigrants, most from peasant backgrounds, took it for granted that they would have the right to work and live within the cultural and religious freedom that Britain's liberal civilization guaranteed. Many found work in the old textile mills of the north. They settled around the mosque and the stores that sold the food that made these towns feel like home. The first generation that arrived imagined making money quickly and then returning home. That future never arrived. Their children and grandchildren have grown up as Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen - Muslim Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen."
The mills closed in the 1980s. The general depression of the mill-and-mosque towns that resulted was reflected in run-down, restless schools, without ambition or excellence. The ambulance-chasers of the Left called for more multiculturalism in these schools, which gave cover to the ex-peasant community's demands for Islamization. They demanded that girls and boys be taught separately, that girls cover their heads and limbs, that schools serve halal meat, that Arabic and the Quran be taught, that history classes depict Britain primarily as an exploitative nation. Principals who resisted were branded racists."
"It was around this time that identification with a militant Islam emerged as a politically distinct force in Britain. While the earlier generation of Muslim immigrants had gone their way without bothering to adopt Western dress, their children grew up wearing Air Jordan sneakers in imitation of American blacks. The great cliché of their generation is that they were caught between cultures. Some resolved this tension by adopting the politics, philosophy, and culture of fundamentalist Islam…Their puritan disgust for the West's popular culture and sexual license, their support for laws that decree the stoning to death of adulteresses, became the profession of an allegiance alienated from the Britain that allows them the freedom to express these views."
"These new zealots had been brought up in a traditional way by parents whose religious views were generally orthodox but not extremist. But in the 1980s, a new Muslim leadership of mullahs, financed by various Islamic powers around the world, was setting up mosques and schools in Britain, thanks to an immigration-law loophole that allows clergymen open-ended permission to stay. Muslim adolescents attracted to this radical preaching came under the domination of the new mullahs, who offered a luminously simple explanation of the cosmos and promised membership in an organization that would dominate the world. 'We carry Islam as a political belief, a complete system,' says Muhammad Omar Bakri, a poisonous cleric who runs a London Muslim organization. 'We don't carry Islam as a religion. It's an ideology.'"
Dhondy reminds us that "After all, if you prostrate yourself to an all-powerful being five times a day, if you are constantly told that you live in the world of Satan, if those around you are impervious to literature, art, historical debate, and the values of Western civilization, your mind becomes susceptible to fanaticism. Your mind rots. [One might observe that this is precisely the ideological dogma, cultural Marxism, that has been preached by the Boomer power elites on America's campuses over the past two or three decades and which pervades our public and political discourse in America today.] Worse, it can become the instrument of others who send you on suicidal missions."
Upscale Muslim organizations in Britain [and the U.S.] expressed regret at the atrocity of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on America. Yet, outside Britain's mosques, Dhondy reminds us, "Young men of jihadi persuasion bellowed slogans supporting the terrorist attack, exhorting worshipers to 'join the war' against America. A poll by the Sunday Times found that 40% of British Muslims think Osama bin laden is 'justified in his war and that the British citizens who joined the Taliban were right to do so. Yet Britain has given permission to stay to [their Islamic 'enemies within']. The very liberalism against which they preach has nursed this Fifth Column."
"When liberal Muslims declare that Sept. 11 was an atrocity contrary to the Quran, the majority of Muslims around the world don't believe them. They accept the interpretation of fundamentalists, whom liberal Muslims have allowed to remain unchallenged."
"What Islam needs is a reformation, and if this very concept is forbidden in the unchangeable word of the Quran, there is enough Islamic history to support a reforming interpretation of the law of living with others. The Muslims in Britain and the U.S. who are educated in Western disciplines and culture must spark this reformation. As for the officials of the U.S. and Britain, they need to redirect the energy that they have poured into race relations and multiculturalism into a defense of the values of freedom and democracy. Their future depends on it."
The British experience with Muslims is being repeated, in slightly different form but with the general context intact, in America. The Tampa Tribune tells us that "Two years ago, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was moving on an ambitious plan...designed to thwart terrorists from taking advantage of the loosely controlled student visa program...in 1993 it became apparent that a terrorist involved in the initial World Trade Center bombing [in 1993] had used a student visa to stay in the United States."
"The program ran into a roadblock: fierce lobbying by colleges and universities that considered foreign students a major revenue source...The schools complained it was a privacy violation to conduct in-depth checks of applicants whose backgrounds raised red flags of possible terrorist involvement. They objected to scrutinizing students bank accounts, parentage, birthplaces and travel histories. 'We, like most Americans, are very uncomfortable with any form of profiling,' said Terry Hartle, vice president of the American Council on Education. 'We are not law enforcement officers.'"
Meanwhile, we find that all of the 19 hijackers of the 9-11 suicide flights entered the U.S. legally. They had "...legally entered the country on tourist or student visas." In addition, there is evidence that terrorists have been recruited in America from a cadre of American citizens of Islamic faith. "A confessed operative of a Silicon Valley terrorist cell says he recruited 10 U.S. citizens into Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization during his 12-year residence in California, according to a news account of his statements to an Egyptian military court."
"Bin Laden personally congratulated Khalid Abu-al-Dahab, 37, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen and confessed member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, for recruiting Islamic Americans into al Qaeda, Dahab told investigators after his 1998 arrest in Cairo on terrorism charges. Dahab said bin Laden was eager to recruit American citizens of Middle eastern descent because their U.S. passports could be used to facilitate international travel by al Qaeda terrorists, according to the account of the confession. It was published Oct. 10 in the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat...Dahab's confession supports the view of many terrorism experts that al Qaeda has 'sleeper' operatives in the United States for future terrorist attacks."
An aside on a related subject was revealed by The Washington Post (but not connected in any aspect of the story) when it revealed that "Two Fairfax County [Virginia] men were denied entry into Israel after authorities found a letter written in Arabic inside their carry-on bags that the FBI says was a farewell note in preparation for a suicide terrorist mission, according to a criminal complaint unsealed yesterday. The men, Mohammed Osman Idris and Mohammed El-Yacoubi, U.S. citizens born and raised in Northern Virginia, turned up for their Dec. 13 flight from New York to Tel Aviv and drew suspicion, the FBI says in an affidavit. The young Muslim men had paid cash for their tickets and were carrying $2,000. They had no checked baggage, no hotel reservations and no stated itinerary. Their passports were only three days old. The letter, written by El-Yacoubi's brother, is about 'Jihad' and 'traveling to Allah.' All three [the two suspected terrorists and the brother] graduated from the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria [Virginia]."
Islamic terrorist 'sleeper cells' exist in the United States of America. "California is host to several terrorist cells, say state officials who are trying to ferret out 'sleeper' agents from the Mexican border to the San Francisco Bay. That effort now centers on San Diego County, where three of the Sept. 11 airline hijackers lived after February 2000. Police anti-terrorism units here warned as early as 1995 of active cells operating in the area. San Diego County at that time had 'within its borders, all the significant Middle East terrorist groups,' said their report, leaked to the Sacramento Bee last week."
"'We know that some of them sought airline training in San Diego, and we know there are plenty of places in the city where terrorists can run for cover and meld into neighborhoods,' says Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, head of the new California terrorist tracking network. The three San Diego-based hijackers - identified by the FBI as Hani Hanjoor, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar - are believed to have crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. They found it easy to fit into San Diego's large Islamic community. They joined flying clubs, lived in apartment complexes and played at soccer fields, primarily with other Arab immigrants, attracting no attention. When the purported leader of the coordinated hijackings, Mohamed Atta, visited them in San Diego last summer, he also drew no attention...'Terrorists don't look particularly sinister, so in a multicultural society, they can fit right in,' said Dipak Gupta, professor of urban studies at San Deigo State University."
Another source found that, "One balmy January evening just after the end of Ramadan, a Saudi graduate student named Omar Al-Bayoumi hosted a party to welcome a pair of recent arrivals into San Diego's large Muslim community. The guests - two dozen men to whom Al-Bayoumi had spread invitations at mosques around the city - squeezed into the newcomers' first-floor garden apartment. They feasted on whole baked lamb, a delicacy provided by their host, who circulated with a video camera. And who were the polite young Saudis who'd moved to town? Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, two of the hijackers who would commandeer a commercial airliner and crash it into the Pentagon...From their arrival here in late 1999 until they departed a few months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Alhazmi and Almihdhar repeatedly enlisted help from San Diego's mosques and established members of its Islamic community. The terrorists leaned on them to find housing, open a bank account, obtain car insurance - even, at one point, get a job."
"In this way, San Diego is distinct from most other places in the country where the 19 hijackers prepared for the attacks. In Florida, New Jersey and suburban Washington, the terrorists operated on the margins, relying on cheap hotels and rented cars. Here, they burrowed in; Alhazmi was listed in the San Diego phone book."
The Washington Times reminds us that "Making San Diego even more convenient for would-be terrorists is the huge forgery industry that has operated here for decades, providing false documents to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants yearly. 'The flow of aliens we have here is so great that the scrutiny is less than it would be in many other places. And the document mills we have here, they'd have an easy time getting driver's licenses, green cards, Social Security cards - whatever they might want,' said [an INS official on condition of anonymity]."
California is not the only state which contains Islamic terrorist 'sleeper cells.' Virginia is also fertile territory for masking the activities of those who would do America harm. For example, "Past the green 'Muslims of America' sign and the stark concrete booth where an armed guard sometimes keeps watch over this rural conclave sits the tidy brown trailer where Vincente Rafael Pierre's eight children live. Their father is in an isolation cell at the Roanoke jail because federal prosecutors allege that he is a local leader of a violent African American Muslim group known as Al-Fuqra. Their mother, accused of buying guns for her husband, was released on bond but is banned from returning to her community, which authorities say has offered haven to Al-Fuqra members linked to firebombings and killings."
"Scholars say Al-Fuqra, which was formed in Pakistan, emerged in the United States in the early 1980s as a religious movement. Its leader, Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani, a Muslim mystic, preached of 'healing' and leaving behind the 'commotion and nonsense,' said New York University anthropologist Robert Dannin. But during the late 1980s and early 1990s, law enforcement officials began linking Al-Fuqra to arsons and bombings in the United States and Canada. Federal authorities say its members target Jews, Hindus and other Muslims. A 1993 report by the Anti-Defamation League counted Al-Fuqra among a 'shadowy group of fanatical religious extremists."
"An agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testified that members of the group had been planning to buy a machine gun. He also described Pierre's involvement a decade ago in a Colorado Al-Fuqra cell that was linked to fraud, a firebombing and a killing...The Colorado cell associated with Pierre was linked to a 1984 firebombing of a Hare Krishna temple in Denver and the 1990 slaying of a Muslim cleric in Tucson. Virginia authorities note that a 1989 search of an Al-Fuqra storage locker in Colorado turned up explosives, a plan to kill the cleric and bullet-riddled papers with human outlines used for target practice. Officials have testified that Pierre's handwriting was on those papers."
"Another cell member convicted of conspiring to kill the cleric fled Colorado before his sentencing and was arrested last summer after spending time in Red House [Virginia, the location of the group's compound]. 'These are very dedicated people. They are...fanatical in their dedication,' said [an authority]."
The Muslim community at Red House, VA is one of a handful of isolated Islamic settlements established across the country by followers of the Muslims of the Americas, a group that promotes advanced studies in Islam and encourages its members to live in small villages...[Their leader] told his followers that "...'Zionist plotters' plan to rule the world. [He also] told them to take their children and flee the nation's cities. For the past two decades, they have done just that, creating rural enclaves across the United States and Canada, including the group's headquarters in Hancock, N.Y., in the western Catskills."
"In the early 1990s, Al Fuqra was linked in Congressional testimony to the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And detectives said that Clement Rodney Hampton-El, one of the men convicted in a related plot to blow up New York City landmarks, worked with Al Fuqra. More recently, a man who was staying at a Muslims of the Americas community near Badger, CA, was charged in the killing of a Fresno County deputy sheriff."
Of course, this evidence and the growing tide of feeling among Americans that there is a 'vast sea' of Muslims in which the 'terrorist fish swim' in America has resulted in an outcry by other Muslims. For example, "Several hundred people met last night in Sterling to hear speakers denounce last week's searches of Muslim homes and businesses in Northern Virginia as reminiscent of government tactics in the McCarthy era. The speakers promised to seek congressional hearings into the raids and called on listeners to support the fundraising efforts of the groups that were searched. Speakers also pledged a renewed effort to organize the American Muslim community."
"Among the businesses raided was Leesburg's Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, which trains Muslim clerics, including for service in the U.S. military. Several of the businesses were centered in Herndon [Virginia], including the International Institute for Islamic Thought. Officials have said that group gave money to a Florida group that the Justice Department said raised money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas."
Fund raising by Islamic organizations all over America has contributed to the terrorist campaign. For example, "Agents from the Maryland Comptroller's Office, who earlier this month alerted the FBI to possible links between cigarette smugglers and terrorist organizations, have arrested two more suspected smugglers and say the problem is more widespread than initially thought...Agents working undercover ...arrested two men transporting 4,660 packs of untaxed cigarettes worth more than $16,962 from Virginia into Maryland....After the Sept. 11 attacks, [authorities] were being mindful of the fact that smugglers might have links to terrorist organizations."
"[Maryland authorities] turned over the names of 212 persons suspected...of smuggling cigarettes to fund terrorist activities. Sixty-one of the 212 suspects have been arrested for smuggling cigarettes...All 61 have names that appear to be of Arabic or Middle Eastern origin. [Maryland authorities] began suspecting links to terrorist groups last March when federal prosecutors in Charlotte, N.C., indicted four persons with ties to a Lebanese cigarette-smuggling ring supplying cash and military equipment - radar devices and night vision goggles - to the guerrilla group Hezbollah."
"[Maryland authorities] said cigarette smugglers make their money by purchasing cigarettes in low tobacco tax states such as Virginia, then reselling them illegally in high tobacco-tax states such as Maryland. Virginia has a cigarette tax of 2.5 cents per pack. In Maryland, the tax is 36 cents per pack. Last year, the head of the U.S. Customs Service told Congress that cigarette imports into the United States surged in 1999, and that profits from cigarette smuggling now rival those from drug traffiking."
All of this activity, legal and illegal, is shielded from public criticism in America by a very well funded and sophisticated political apparatus. That is, "Muslims in the United States are among the world's most educated and diverse, and as a political community in the West, they are also one of the best organized. That is the assessment of scholars and surveys attempting to describe a largely immigrant community from many countries, which has multiplied dramatically in number since 1970."
"'Within the Muslim community, there is tremendous diversity,' said Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which recently drew 40,000 participants to its 38th annual convention in Chicago. While certain features of this group, whose U.S. population estimates range from fewer than 3 million to more than 7 million, stand out. Black Americans who joined the Black Muslim movement in the 1950s gave Islam its first U.S. prominence, though immigrant Muslims have always formed the largest number of adherents here."
"After the 1965 immigration act reopened U.S. doors to the Middle East, Africa and Asia, immigrant Muslims began to make a mark. Over the next two decades, Islam's best educated came here, many tied to a new religious resurgence of Islam abroad. They often fled governments such as Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan that had cracked down on radical Muslims who wanted to make the Quran, their holy book, the final word on law. 'The number of radicals who migrated to the United States is substantially larger than the moderates,' said Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and critic of what he calls the 'Islamist' movement."
"'England has a yet more radicalized population than we do,' [Pipes] said. 'While working-class Muslims migrated to Europe, doctors, lawyers and students came to the United States.' Nearly eight in 10 U.S. Muslims were born abroad, and no imams, or prayer leaders at mosques, are American-born, according to an American Muslim Council (AMC) survey in 2000."
This situation has been commented on by Georgie Anne Geyer, a syndicated columnist. "The crucial 'internal enforcement' capacity of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has become all but nonexistent. The Justice Department has identified and sent out a list of about 6,000 young men from Middle Eastern countries who have ignored deportation orders, which is obviously an attempt to round up the remaining terrorists and their sympathizers in America...But [in Houston, TX], at another 'ground zero,' the local office of the INS says frankly that a special 'anti-fugitive' operation last fall was a complete failure...In short, the war in Tora Bora against al Qaeda may turn out to be far easier to win than America's internal war to put its immigration and citizenship house in order...Today, there are close to a million immigrants annually, 8 million to 9 million men and women in America illegally, and America's ethnic mix has been totally skewed toward the Third World through deliberate policies such as 'family reunifications.'"
"More than 314,000 foreign nationals have remained in the country illegally after they were ordered deported. The 6,000 Middle Easterners are only a small number of these, but the intention here, of course, is to first apprehend absconders from countries that export terrorism...[But] just the week before September 11, [the Bush] administration was ready to declare an amnesty for illegal aliens, whose numbers would soon have reached 9 million. The fact is that, over these three decades - and particularly over the last 10 years when the Clinton administration adamantly refused to crack down on the student and tourist visa violations that led directly to September 11 - the institution empowered with implementation of the law has been crippled."
An especially troublesome aspect of the Islamic diaspora in America is the attitude of its young people. Many have obviously not been 'assimilated,' that is, grounded in the principles set forth by our Founding fathers. One of those principles is that along with the opportunity afforded by American citizenship is a concomitant responsibility to the Constitution. For example, "Many American Islamic leaders say they support the war on terrorism, but some younger Muslims here say they are not willing to fight that war against others of their faith...Altaf Husain, 31, a Howard University PhD student, strikes a [negative] note. 'Most Muslim students hold widespread grievances about America's role in the Middle East conflict, its sanctions against Iraq and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia,' he says. Mr. Husain insists that this does not mean such students feel any less patriotic about being Americans, but he concedes he would not be willing to fight against other Muslims. 'Not under these circumstances and not for this war,' says Mr. Hassain, the U.S.-born son of Egyptian parents and president of the National Muslim Students Association. ' It doesn't sit well to say Afghan people should suffer when they have not done anything. He regards Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden as merely a suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a belief shared by [other students there]."
"Some young Muslims condemn Osama bin Laden's terrorism, but say his grievances against the Unite States are legitimate. Rania Tarbush, 21, a graduate student of biology at American University, says her family 'is back in Palestine, suffering attacks by Israel every day. The day after the Sept. 11 attacks, I was on the phone with them and I could hear the shelling in the background."
"George Washington University student Faisal Matadar says U.S. policies are responsible for suffering the world over. 'There is no justification for the [Sept. 11] attacks, but there is an explanation,' says Matadar, 21, an American-born student whose parents are from India."
The Washington Post interviewed several students at the Muslim Community School in Potomac, MD and found that "...six young people, all born in this country, all American citizens, told me that no, they did not believe Osama bin Laden was necessarily the bad guy the president says he is, and no, they did not think the United States should be attacking Afghanistan, and, no, they might not be able to serve their country if it meant taking up arms against fellow Muslims. 'What does it really mean to be an American?' asked seventh-grader Miriam. 'Being American is just being born in this country.'"
"'If I had to choose sides, I'd stay with being Muslim,' said eighth-grader Ibrahim. 'Being an American means nothing to me. I'm not even proud of telling my cousins in Pakistan that I'm American.' Tenth-grader Fatemeh said the question about loyalty was proof of the bias Muslim Americans now face. 'I'm an American, born and raised here,' she said, with a thrilling indignation. 'Why shouldn't I feel part of the patriotism? By being American, you represent freedom and democracy.'
"'Fighting a person who has the same beliefs would be tough,' added Kamal, the son of an American convert to Islam and a Moroccan man. 'I guess there is a conflict between being loyal to the government and being loyal to your faith.' Almost no matter what they were asked, the students answers often included something about how the United States should focus not just on bin Laden's terror network but on 'the real terrorists,' which is their code for Israel, which they refer to as 'the illegitimate Zionist regime.'"
The school which these students attend is the Muslim Community School which shares space and directors with the Islamic Education Center, which runs religious and language classes and has close ties to the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, and, according to U.S. officials, is 'entirely controlled by the government of Iran...Several leaders of Muslim groups in Washington did not want to be quoted criticizing an Islamic institution, but privately said that the Potomac school's political leanings are heavily influenced by Iran and are at odds with what's taught at other Islamic schools in the region. That view was bolstered by the sharp contrast between the school's students, who seemed to have the natural curiosities and passions of teenagers, and their principal, who seemed to have an angry agenda...a 'media relations guide sheet' distributed at the school advised telling visiting reporters that 'there is as much evidence pointing away from' bin Laden as there is' circumstantial evidence' pointing toward him."
The reporter interviewing the principal of the school asks the rhetorical question, 'Is the Muslim Community School teaching hate?' He reports that, "[The principal] said that was impossible, that Islam is a faith of peace. 'Our kids are not insensitive or uncaring,' he said. 'It's not that they are targeting somebody. These are the reference points we are exposing them to, because we don't see ourselves in nation-state terms. We are our own nation.'" Wow! That says it all. The Islamic Fifth Column is alive and well in America - even at the level of grade-school educational institutions. While America sleeps!
The attitude of the youngsters in Islamic educational institutions in America is about the same as that of the diaspora's Islamic leaders. The Washington Times found that "...some of these leaders appeared reluctant to identify the perpetrators [of the 9-11 attacks] as part of an Osama bin Laden or Islamic-fundamentalist conspiracy...And some leaders yesterday said the United States, to avoid making more enemies abroad, must first prove to the world that the people it targets for retaliation committed the crime. Although most Arab-American leaders say this is not the time to bring Middle East policy into the discussion, some of these leaders are now hinting that anti-American terrorism is rooted in American foreign policy in the region [obviously our support for Israel]...'We have to understand when people abroad are angry with this country and come up with solutions,' Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR], said in an interview."
So, what is the answer? Is Islam a peaceful religion? Will the Islamic diaspora in America be able to put its citizenship above the mandates of its religion? The answer, despite all of the public relations announcements to the contrary, is in the negative. Roberto de Mattei, writing on 'Lepanto: A Category of the Spirit,' in the April 2002 issue of Chronicles writes, "To reduce radical Islamism to terrorism or to the deliriums of a psychotic...is to insult both Islam and our own intelligence. Radical Islam is an interpretation that is coherent and widely spread through the world of Islam. It may not be the majority opinion, but it is strong precisely because it is radical and coherent, and it will, therefore, expand within Islam, which even in its modern version has always had as its goal - derived from the Koran - the subjugation of the entire world to the word of Allah. This is a teaching that characterizes all Islam. Islamic terrorism is simply a strategic variant of the broader project of conquest whose ultimate goal is the Islamicization of our society."
"The clash of civilizations was not invented by Samuel Huntington; it is a reality, whether we wish it or not. To acknowledge its existence is not the same as to desire it, and if we were to eliminate the phrase from our language, we would not so easily eliminate the reality. It would be wonderful if we could avoid war by simply refusing to label an aggressor as 'the enemy.' Unfortunately, in a war of defense, it is not up to us to choose the enemy: the enemy chooses us."
An astute letter-to-the-editor writer in the Sebring, FL 'Highlands Today' newspaper observes, "If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny how some of our people have this silly fascination with Islam and Muslims since 9-11. A few examples are: According to the New York Post, schools in New York are required to set aside a room in the school for the Muslim children to pray in. They are required to schedule the student's classes so that they could go pray without interfering with their studies. (Christians and Jews are not included.)"
"According to the Assist News Service (ANS), schools in California require seventh-grade students to study a three-week course in Islam. The study plan calls for the children to: 1) Learn the tenets of Islam, 2) Study the important figures of the faith, 3) Wear a robe, and adopt a Muslim name, 4) Memorize verses in the Koran, 5) Chant, 'Praise Allah, Lord of creation."
"ANS obtained a copy of the textbook and reported that it presented Islam in an entirely positive manner while showing Christianity in a negative light going so far as to highlight events such as the inquisition and the Salem witch hunts in bold black type. Nancy Castro, principal of a school where the course is taught, defends the course, saying it's not taught as a religion but as ancient culture and history."
"Where is the anti-Christian Legal Union, ACLU? Where is the 'Separation of Church and State' crowd? They are no doubt tickled 'pink' over this. (No pun intended.) Just think what screaming and lawsuits there would be if a course in Christianity were taught that required the students to (horror of horrors) memorize Bible verses."
"The Koran directs Muslims to kill 'infidels.' An 'infidel' is described as anyone who doesn't believe in Islam and Allah. Do we need to know more? Should we be tolerant and understand someone that five times per day prays to a God that instructs him or her to kill us? The president goes to great lengths to show that Islam is peace. This just isn't so. For adultery a person is beheaded or stoned to death. If anyone has a question about Islam, ask someone who lost a relative at the World Trade Center on 9-11
by David Horowitz
