OPINION:
The Islamic terror attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris was carried out by Muslim criminals who were apparently trained in Yemen.
Meanwhile, national security officials are warning of an imminent threat to Europe and the United States from jihadi soldiers who are returning from the wars in Syria and Iraq. According to the head of the FBI and other first responders, there is no way to stop their re-entry because, after all, they have American passports. Nor is there any way to stop them in Syria and Iraq since President Obama has surrendered both countries to our enemies.
The Democratic mayor of New York — ground zero for the Islamic war — has even stopped the surveillance of jihadi mosques, the breeding grounds for domestic “lone wolves.” And with our southern border shredded by Mr. Obama and the Democrats, it’s not going to be difficult even for foreign jihadis to reach their infidel targets. Of course, the president doesn’t like the word “terror” to begin with, let alone “Islamic terror.” Thanks to him, the Islamic war against the United States is officially referred to as an “overseas contingency operation,” while domestic Islamic mayhem is filed under the category “workplace violence.”
Fourteen years after Sept. 11, 2001, it is tragically clear that President Bush was right about the threat we faced and the Democrats were suicidally wrong. The Sept. 11 attacks were indeed a salvo in the war Islamists have declared on us but even now, 14 years later, Democrats still want to regard such attacks as acts of individual criminality. They insist on dealing with them through the legal justice system, affording American rights to those who want to destroy American rights. Why, you may ask yourself, is the Boston Marathon bomber being tried in a criminal court of law, where he will be able to make propaganda for his cause underwritten by his victims? Because Democrats want it that way. It shows we’re superior to everybody else.
Nine days after Sept. 11, Mr. Bush addressed both houses of Congress to outline his response to the terror attacks. This is what he said about states that harbor Islamic terrorists, such as Yemen and Syria: “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. [Applause.] From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
When the president had completed his remarks, these were precisely the sentences that were singled out for attack by the political left. To progressives, Mr. Bush was a tyrant in the making and they took his warning personally: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Unfortunately, even though Mr. Bush was not referring the left in uttering these words, he might as well have been. When Mr. Bush decided to take on the terrorist-supporting, U.N.-defying regime of Saddam Hussein, Democrats went into full war mode against him, against the “war on terror,” and against America’s mission to defeat the al Qaeda armies that had assembled in Iraq. Their sabotage of the war went on for five years, making it impossible for Mr. Bush to take on the terror-supporting regimes in Syria, Iran and elsewhere.
The Obama administration is the product of this momentous Democratic defection from America’s purposes, from a robust defense of the American homeland, and from a militant response to the war that Islamists have declared on us. Why is there still a free flow of immigration from nations like Yemen that support or tolerate the Islamist armies ranged against us? Why isn’t our southern border secure? It is because the Obama administration, with support from Democrats in Congress, regards security measures against terror supporting states to be “Islamophobic,” and regards securing our southern border to be xenophobic. Why isn’t Mr. Obama embracing President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and his Egyptian regime that has declared the Islamists to be enemies of the Islamic world? It is because Mr. Obama is committed to the Muslim Brotherhood — the fount of al Qaeda — and against this same Egyptian regime.
Will the massacre in Paris — a repellent assault on free speech in the name of the Prophet Muhammad — wake up the Democrats and the Obama White House, and end their appeasement of Islamic terror? Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Their leader is a lifelong, America-despising radical who has shown little appetite for changing course. It remains to be seen whether other Democrats will attribute their recent electoral drubbing to the weak-kneed security policies of the appeaser-in-chief, and find the voice to oppose him. If they don’t, it is a safe bet that this country is in for some bloody consequences.
• David Horowitz is the founder and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of “The Great Betrayal” (Little, Brown, 1998).
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