In January 2009 a presumptuous, newly elected head of state issued a series of executive orders: Guantanamo was to be closed within a year. The CIA interrogation program was suspended, et al. The troublesome fact is that this wishy-washy administration disdains military tribunals. (They have been used in our history from the Revolutionary War to World War II and are provided for specifically in a statute passed by Congress called the Military Commissions Act.)
Islamism traces back to Egypt in the 1920s when Hassan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood. His disciple was Sayyid Qutb. This situation morphed into Qutb’s brother teaching the doctrine to Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leading Al Qaeda ideologist; and Osama bin laden, the pampered child of one of the richest construction families in Saudi Arabia, and many others.
In 1996 through 1998, bin Laden declared that he and his accomplices were at war with the United States! Two American embassies were bombed and the USS Cole was attacked. (It would have carried out the bombing of another naval vessel, but for the fact that the barge carrying the explosives was overloaded and sank.) The abject, sanctimonious administration once again invoked criminal law. Did these incompetent nincompoops think they were dealing with a novice like Al Capone? The same officials won’t face up to the brutal facts that involve recreation of an Islamic caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law over a broad swath of the world. (As has been accomplished in Birmingham, England, ad infinitum.) There is a furtive movement now ongoing to invoke Sharia law is some southern states. Keep your eyes open for further developments. (There is a Muslim mayor of Detroit and others on the city council.) Policy makers daydream about democratic movements in the near east – the reality: it’s more populist that “democratic.”
This is the credo of the Muslin Brotherhood: Allah is our goal, the Prophet Muhammad is our leader, the Quran is our Constitution, jihad is our way and death in the way of Allah is our promised end.
Let us be alert to the enemies in our society who wish to create closed ethnic zones where Muslims essentially run their own affairs and outsiders enter only at their own peril. This has already happened in France, Holland, England, and Sweden, and it allows radicalization to go on undetected.
The standard of the past will keep intact the system that we depend on to preserve the United States of America – Abraham Lincoln called it “the last, best hope of earth.”
Bruce King
Hamilton