GELLER: Borderline Obama

OPINION:

As a federal judge gutted Arizona’s new immigration law on July 29, the Obama State Department announced that it was “encouraged” by signs that the Arab League would support, or at least not directly impede, direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Not surprisingly, media seemed not to notice or care how the two things were related. But they are.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the question of immigration is its connection to national security. Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, mentioned that connection on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, but it received very little notice thereafter. Even Arizona’s Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, who wrote the Arizona immigration bill, SB 1070, hasn’t spoken of its role in protecting the nation. Yet there is a silver bullet linking the Islamic terror threat with the porous border of Arizona that deserves our immediate attention.

With fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border, and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.

My colleague and coauthor, Robert Spencer, has spoken with people who live along the Arizona border who for years have been finding Korans and Islamic prayer rugs on their property, left by illegal invaders. It is well documented in the Department of Homeland Security’s 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Studies, from the Office of Immigration Statistics: Federal law enforcement agencies detained 791,568 deportable aliens in fiscal year 2008, and 5,506 of them were from 14 “special-interest countries” - i.e., nations full of jihadists such as Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Informants are telling us that those numbers continue to swell. But where are these people? What Americans - Arizonans in particular - are not being told is what Immigration Customs Enforcement does with individuals who were detained after illegally entering Arizona from a “special-interest country.”

Here is what we do know:

Whenever Arizona law enforcement officials contact Homeland Security about a suspected OTM (Other Than Mexican) they have detained, federal authorities swoop down, cart off the illegal entrant, and tell local officials nothing more about the case. OTMs have utilized sophisticated human smuggling networks to enter the United States from as many as 157 countries around the world - including Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco and Egypt.

All this is happening against the backdrop of President Obama’s refusal to admit that the global jihad even exists. John Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser, even denies that jihad is a motive for jihadists. Mr. Obama has publicly excoriated Israel, demanded that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed, called for civilian trials of terrorists and embraced Palestinian statehood even if it jeopardizes Israel’s security.

Mr. Obama’s stance is consistent: As I show in my book, “The Post-American Presidency,” he is a socialist internationalist who wants to subordinate America to international law. Why should he care about securing the borders? And in Arizona and all along the border, the beneficiaries of his policies will be Islamic jihadists - the same people he is encouraging, enabling and backing in their jihad against Israel.

Regarding both Arizona and Israel, with a consistency that can only come from deeply held conviction, Barack Obama is damaging national security and endangering the future of our nation.

Domestically, Mr. Obama is contemptuous of capitalism and rugged individualism, and with his socialist programs has gone to war against the American economy. Internationally, he is not only inveterately hostile to Israel, but he has turned a blind eye to Iran’s genocidal intentions and nuclear program, and generally appears intent on turning America’s historical enemies into friends and friends into enemies.

Unpoliced borders. Friendships with and outreach to tyrants and autocrats. Mr. Obama’s dream seems to be to turn America into something like the Indonesia of his youth or the Pakistan he visited as a college student. At best, it would be just another country, unexceptional in any way. At worst, it would be a Third World nation, lagging far behind other global economic and cultural leaders.

Throughout his life and his political career, Mr. Obama has been consistent - right up to and into his presidency. And today, his policies in Arizona and Israel - not connected or related to each other by any analyst on the scene - are two separate manifestations of the same anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-jihad core convictions that have guided his actions and associations since the beginning of his political career and even before.

It is all a result of how he was brought up, of what shaped his mind and heart. It is all a result of what drives him. And what drives him is not American. He said it himself: “I was a little Jakarta street kid” who found the Islamic call to prayer to be “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

Now the little Jakarta street kid has grown up. And America hangs in the balance.

Pamela Geller, with Robert Spencer, is the author of “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America” (Threshold Editions, 2010). She is editor of the website www.AtlasShrugs.com.