As you saw last night, the first picture of the female Jihadi from San Bernardino has been released, and as you already know she got her Visa to come here and kill our citizens by lying about her address on the application. (How’s that vetting program going, guys?) [Edit: It turns out the address was “close”) Let’s have a fresh look at the face of one of the people who pledged her allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi even as she was busily slaughtering Californians.
By this point, we have removed the few remaining slivers of doubt regarding the terrorist natures of the attack which I was generously allowing for early Thursday morning. (There remain some logistical questions about the target selection which really don’t impact the underlying motive, but that may eventually be sorted out through a complete investigation.) As I watched the continuing coverage roll out over the next two days, however, I found myself growing increasingly angry. I’m not talking about the anger nearly everyone was feeling toward the terrorists and their masters in Iraq and Syria… that’s pretty much a given. What was really getting my goat was, once again, the response of so much of the media, representatives from the Muslim community and even our own elected leaders.
As soon as the attacks had been even tentatively identified as a terrorist action rather than some crazy, white militia guys, the press was out looking for Muslims who felt a need for some safe spaces.
The motivations of the California killers are still unclear, although authorities are investigating it as a potential act of terrorism. Muslims said they are bracing for an even more toxic climate in which Americans are increasingly suspicious of Muslims.
Muslims say that Americans, like many in Europe, often do not draw a distinction between radical Islamist militants, such as those associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the religion of Islam and its followers who have no ties to extremism.
There was a seemingly endless parade of people who were quick to warn us that the real problem here was the danger of unreasonable Americans overreacting to the attack. CAIR’s Los Angeles director was quick to remind everyone that we are all at least partly responsible for these terrorist attacks and it’s a global problem, not a Muslim problem. As AP noted last night, our own Attorney General took to the podium to let us all know that if any of the speech about radical Islam got out of hand there would be consequences.
And did you happen to catch the press conference held by the attorneys for the family of the terrorists? That one seriously had me steaming, but at least I wasn’t alone in my reaction. In case you missed it, you’ll want to watch the video of The Five at Foxwhen the panel reacted to that presser. I think one of the kindest things they had to say was that those lawyers may as well have been a comedy troupe on tour.
Perhaps one of the most annoying responses of all came from members of Congress who wanted to show their solidarity with the Muslim community. In order to do so, they hastily set up plans to attend services last night at a DC area mosque which has long had ties to Islamic terror and a history of anti-American rhetoric.
I’m sure my own mental health would have benefited if I’d simply stayed off Twitter for the last two days, but I apparently just can’t help myself. I think I finally hit the wall mentally when I saw Jonathan Capehart react to the announcement that the FBI was finally investigating this as a terrorist attack and that radical Islam was at the heart of it. It was, he said, going to be an even uglier day.
This is going to be an even uglier day…… https://t.co/MlwKuTBLIR
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) December 4, 2015
Capehart was asked by one of his followers if that was because the truth had finally been revealed. That might be part of it, but Jonathan had another concern on his mind.
And because of the hate/vitriol it will engender….. https://t.co/HWchnsbhMB
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) December 4, 2015
I could no longer hold my social media tongue at that point and sort of blew up. (My apologies to my followers with gentler sensibilities for the occasion F-bombs.) But seriously… one of our chief concerns at this moment in American history is the hate or vitriol it will engender? We have these conversations on a regular basis and for some reason they always seem more acceptable when the attacks are taking place on foreign shores. That’s not to say they should have been acceptable, but as with most things in life, when the danger is an ocean away it’s far easier to sit and argue the nuances of religious freedom and privacy. But all of the worry warts mentioned above should have been able to pull their heads out of the sand long enough to register one rather ugly fact:
We were just attacked by the ISIS fan club in California and more than a dozen people are dead.
You’ll forgive me if I’m not terribly upset about anyone getting their feelings bruised at the moment. This is not the time to be shy or politically correct… this is the time to realize that there are monsters walking among us and those monsters need to be slain. Do you recall that story we mentioned on Wednesday about the neighbor who saw a suspicious number of Middle Eastern men traipsing in and out of the Farook famiy’s Redlands home but didn’t report it because they didn’t want to be accused of racially profiling anyone? I’ll let you in on a little secret here. We all need to be racially profiling like it’s our full time paid job right now.
If the FBI and our other intelligence agencies aren’t looking into the backgrounds of every person at that mosque or Islamic center that Farook was hanging out at right now and checking every dollar that came into and went out of it, as well as combing through every social media contact they have, then we are essentially a nation of lemmings heading for the cliff. And it can’t be limited to that one mosque. I certainly hope that later on down the road we’ll find out that we’re checking those same details about every mosque in the country. If it turns out that everything is fine, that your money is going to help the flock locally, and that you are helping us by identifying any members who may be whispering about jihad, then fine. No problem. We’ll move along now, so have a nice day. Oh, I can hear the complaints already. That’s unfair! It’s profiling! You can’t just check the Muslim centers without checking the Christians and the Jews and everyone else too!
Baloney. When people ask why the NYPD does most of their “hard policing” in Brownsville and not upper Manhattan, it’s because they have limited resources and they need to be working where the crime is. The same goes for this situation. While not all Muslims are terrorists, the terrorist activity is coming from that community at astronomical rates compared to any other group. If you find some credible leads saying that the Christians or the Jews are up to these sorts of heinous acts, let us know. You want to bring up the Westboro Baptist church? Fine. Investigate them too, and it’s probably long overdue. But that’s the very, very rare exception.
Perhaps all of the liberals heading for their fainting couches over the idea that we need to be finding the terrorists who are now proven to be on our own shores can, just this once, get a grip and decide which side of this war they are on. And if not, they should get out of the way, STFD and STFU. We have work to do and some of it’s not going to be pretty. But if we’re not willing to do it then I don’t want to hear any more crying from them about lives lost or gun laws or discrimination when the next group of ISIS “inspired” animals pops up here at home and wipes out another group of people at a Christmas party.
Rant over. Please feel free to go about your day.
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