WarSclerotic

DHS Provides the Security Islamists Need and Want, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 23, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM) 

However, the Department of Homeland Security does not provide the security the rest of us need and want; instead, it does its level best to diminish it. Providing a reasonable level of security would contradict Obama’s view of Islam, Life, the Universe and Everything.

Refugee Fraud

On September 22nd, members of the U.S. Congress made public an internal Department of Homeland Security memo in which it was acknowledged that Refugee fraud is easy to commit and much tougher to detect:

The U.S. has relaxed requirements for refugees to prove they are who they say they are, and at times may rely solely on testimony. That makes it easier for bogus applicants to conspire to get approved, according to the department memo, which was obtained by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. [Emphasis added.]

“Refugee fraud is easy to commit, yet not easy to investigate,” the undated memo says.

 The memo said there are clear instances where “bad actors … have exploited this program,” gaining a foothold in the U.S. through bogus refugee claims.

The revelation comes just a week after the administration said it was boosting the number of refugees it wants to accept next year to 110,000, up from 85,000 this year. Officials also said they’ll take more Syrians than the 12,000 they’ve accepted so far this year — and they are on pace to resettle as many as 30,000 in 2017. [Emphasis added.]

The President’s decision to increase overall refugee resettlement – and specifically that of Syrian refugees – ignores warnings from his own national security officials that Syrians cannot be adequately vetted to ensure terrorists are not admitted. Revelations about fraud, security gaps, and lack of oversight have demonstrated that the program is creating national security risks,” Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Bob Goodlatte said in a letter to Homeland Security on Thursday. [Emphasis added.]

The Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that she had never seen the internal DHS memo. Why not? Isn’t ICE in charge of enforcing “our” immigration laws?

Countering Violent Extremism

The video provided above explains how CVE has been implemented thus far.

The head of DHS’s “countering violent extremism” program acknowledged on the same day, September 22nd, that its thus far year-long-in-the-brewing “strategic plan” for “combatting violent extremism” has not yet been completed.

George Selim, director of the Office of Community Partnerships at DHS, was repeatedly asked by members of the House Homeland Security Thursday why he could not provide a document outlining the organization’s $10 million plans for countering the spread of terrorism.

. . . .

Selim finally admitted the plan is not finished, stating that a finalized version is “nearly ready.”

He added that he didn’t want to give the impression that the organization is without any strategy after being up and running for a year, and stressed that he takes the use of taxpayer dollars seriously.

Congress appropriated $10 million in funding to the Countering Violent Extremism initiative, which can issue grants to nonprofit organizations working in local communities to prevent radicalization. [Emphasis added.]

But when asked by Rep. Barry Loudermilk R-Ga., to provide evidence that the program was not a “black hole” for taxpayers, Selim could only answer that he has seen positive changes “anecodally” and could not provide any metrics for success.

“I can’t sit hear before you today and definitively say that person was going to commit an act of terrorism with a pressure cooker bomb, but we’re developing that prevention framework in a range of cities across the country,” said Selim.

When asked whether any of the funding provided to DHS for its “countering violent extremism” was being given to terror-linked groups, Mr. Selim responded that

there is no blacklist of non-governmental organizations prohibited from applying for federal funding in the government. He did not say whether their current vetting process has ever mistakenly funded groups that jeopardize national security when questioned, but argued there is always room for improvement when a program is in its infancy. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Selim’s reply was not responsive; there may be no Federal blacklist, but that an NGO is not on one should not authorize DHS to fund it. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is, of course, one of the principal Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist organizations upon which the “countering violent extremism” farce relies. Secretary Johnson recently delivered an address to the Islamic Society of North America, which is similarly linked. The countering violent extremism farce focuses, not on root problem of preventing Islamist terrorism, but on rooting out “Islamophobia.”

Here’s a video of Dr. Zuhid Jasser’s testimony before Congress on September 22nd

on Identifying the Enemy: Radical Islamist Terror. This hearing examines the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, the importance of identifying the threat for what it is, and ways to defeat it.

A transcript of Dr. Jasser’s testimony is available here

Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra also testified:

According to the blurb beneath the video,

Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra at the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency of the House Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress. Congress must ask the Obama administration about PSD-11, which made official the US Government’s outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. [emphasis added.]

In His efforts to push the narrative that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, Obama has (a) shared His erroneous perception of the Islamic State and (b) tried to suggest that the Islamic State is the only entity which diverges from “true” Islam. His argument as to (a)

is a strawman argument: the real question isn’t whether ISIS “represents” Islam, but whether ISIS is a byproduct of Islam.  And this question can easily be answered by looking not to ISIS but Islam.  One can point to Islamic doctrines that unequivocally justify ISIS behavior; one can point to the whole of Islamic history, nearly 14 centuries of ISIS precedents.

Or, if these two options are deemed too abstract, one can simply point to the fact that everyday Muslims all around the world are behaving just like ISIS. [Emphasis added.]

For example, Muslims—of all races, nationalities, languages, and socio-political and economic circumstances, in Arab, African, Central and East Asian nations—claim the lions’ share of Christian persecution; 41 of the 50 worst nations to be Christian in are Islamic.  In these countries, Muslim individuals, mobs, clerics, politicians, police, soldiers, judges, even family members—none of whom are affiliated with ISIS (other than by religion)—abuse and sometimes slaughter Christians, abduct, enslave and rape their women and children, ban or bomb churches, and kill blasphemers and apostates.

. . . .

Or consider a Pew poll which found that, in 11 countries alone, at least 63 million and as many as 287 million Muslims support ISIS.  Similarly, 81% of respondents to an Arabic language Al Jazeera poll supported the Islamic State. [Emphasis added.]

Do all these hundreds of millions of Muslims support the Islamic State because they’ve been suckered into its “narrative”—or even more silly, because we have—or do they support ISIS because it reflects the same supremacist Islam that they know and practice, one that preaches hate and violence for all infidels, as America’s good friends and allies, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar—not ISIS—are on record proclaiming? [Emphasis added.]

It is this phenomenon, that Muslims the world over—and not just this or that terrorist group that “has nothing to do with Islam”—are exhibiting hostility for and terrorizing non-Muslims that the Obama administration and its mainstream media allies are committed to suppressing.  Otherwise the unthinkable could happen: people might connect the dots and understand that ISIS isn’t mangling Islam but rather Islam is mangling the minds of Muslims all over the world. [Emphasis added.]

Hence why White House spokesman Josh Earnest can adamantly dismiss 14 centuries of Islamic history, doctrine, and behavior that mirrors ISIS: “That is mythology. That is falsehood. That is not true.” Hence why U.S. media coverage for one dead gorilla was six times greater than media coverage for 21 Christians whose heads were carved off for refusing to recant their faith.

As to (b),

The powers-that-be prefer that the debate—the “narrative”—be restricted to ISIS, so that the group appears as an aberration to Islam.  Acknowledging that untold millions of Muslims are engaged in similar behavior leads to a much more troubling narrative with vast implications. [Emphasis added.]

Conclusions

Obama has what one might wish were a unique world view. However, as Obama has not yet discovered, wishing that something were true does not make it true. He elucidated His world view in His recent address to the United Nations.

U.S. President Barack Obama sang his swan song this week at the United Nations, and seemed baffled by the stubborn refusal of the world to reform itself in his image and on his say-so. [Emphasis added.]

How can there still be “deep fault lines in the international order,” Obama wondered aloud, with “societies filled with uncertainty and unease and strife?”

Shouldn’t his identity as a man “made up of flesh and blood and traditions and cultures and faiths from a lot of different parts of the world” have served as a shining and irresistible example of blended global peace? How can it be that, after eight years of his visionary leadership, peoples everywhere aren’t marching to his tune of self-declared superior “moral imagination”? [Emphasis added.]

It is indeed a “paradox,” Obama declared.

In his preachy, philosophical and snooty address to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, Obama expressed deep disappointment with the world. Alas, it seems peoples and nations are just not sophisticated enough to comprehend his sage sermonizing, smart enough to follow his enlightened example, or deep enough to understand his perfect policies. [Emphasis added.]

Why does the world not snap to order as he imperiously wishes and drool in his presence?

. . . .

The words “enemy, “threat” or “adversary” do not appear even once in Obama’s 5,600-word address. They are not part of his lexicon, nor are concepts like “victory” for the West or “beating” the bad guys. He won’t even names foes, such as “radical Islam” or “Islamist terror.”

All this high-minded intellectualizing, self-doubt and equivocation leave the U.S. with little ability to actually drive towards a more ordered world and provide a modicum of global security.

Instead, we have only Obama’s “belief” that Russia’s imperialist moves in Ukraine and Syria, China’s power grabs in Asia, and Iran’s hegemonic trouble-making in the Middle East (and by inference, Israel’s settlement policies in Judea and Samaria) will “ultimately backfire.”

Obama has many such unsubstantiated and illusory “beliefs.” It is very important for him to tell us what he “believes,” and he does so repeatedly. Clearly, he believes in the overwhelming potency of his own beliefs, despite the global security collapse. In fact, the U.N. speech reads like chapter one of the expected Obama memoirs, which surely will be filled with more inane “beliefs” and other ostentation. [Emphasis added.]

Fortunately, Obama will soon leave the presidency.

It falls to Congress and the next president to redirect U.S. policy and hopefully base it less on whimsical, wayward beliefs and more on a hard-nosed, forceful reassertion of Western interests.

Unfortunately, Hillary shares many of not most of Obama’s delusions.

Fortunately, Trump does not and seems to have a pretty good chance of becoming our President.