The following is a blog I wrote about a year ago. I encountered it while doing some "house cleaning" at my website, and it struck me that the only thing that has changed in the year since I wrote it is the number of attacks, the number of foiled plots and the number of discredited media reports of these incidents.

I am re-posting this blog here with the grim realization that we have, in fact, drifted back into apathetic slumber while our enemies regroup and redouble their efforts against us.
What I find particularly disturbing is a notion that I cannot seem to shake:

Not even a nuclear blast in one of our cities will jolt us out of our stupor for more than a few months. Have we already lost? Did You Happen To notice That We Are At War?
August 2006

Last night, just as I was about to go to bed, news started coming in about a disrupted plot to blow 10 airliners out of the sky somewhere over the Atlantic.
The would-be bombers were reportedly planning to use liquid explosives smuggled aboard the aircraft disguised as common items, such as contact lens cleaner, baby formula or shampoo. The alleged terrorists are citizens of the United Kingdom, and of Pakistani origin or ancestry.

This is quite similar to a plot that was disrupted several years ago, in which multiple planes were to be bombed in a similar fashion (liquid explosives) over the Pacific, while flying from the Philippines to the U.S.
Implicated in this earlier plot was Ramzi Yousef, who is currently rotting in an American jail for his part in the first World Trade Center bombing.
You may also recall that Yousef is nephew to Kahlid Shiekh Mohammed, one of the principle planners of the 9/11 attacks, who was arrested by Pakistani security forces in 2003.
Small world.

At the same time, hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah are ratcheting up, provoked to no small degree by Iran, who has made her intentions toward the "Zionist entity" abundantly clear. Iran has provided weapons, training and hundreds of millions in finances to Hizbollah, all to achieve their "ultimate solution to the Jewish problem".
Sound familiar? Think funny little mustache.

In fact, recent reports from Israel claim that several bodies of Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers were recovered along with killed Hezbollah fighters, a claim Tehran immediately denied.
So, in fact, Hizbollah is not only a proxy of Iran, but Iranians are actually fighting side by side with the Hizbollah terrorists.

Meanwhile, Iraq is in turmoil, due in large part to the infiltration of Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Muqtada al Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Army.
A wholly owned subsidiary of the Ayatollahs, the Mahdi militia has been instigating sectarian violence all over Iraq, but particularly in Baghdad.
Muqtada al Sadr clearly seeks to emulate Hizbollah's modus operandi, and he has already gone a long way toward insinuating himself into the new Iraqi government, while his militia undermines national security and the Iraqi's perception of (and faith in) their new government.
And of course the Sunni insurgents, aided by al Qaeda, are only too happy to escalate religious and ethnic tensions at any opportunity.
To the north, the Kurds mostly just want to be left alone, and they have been doing a decent job of maintaining peace and stability.
But they are not about to be cut out of Iraq's oil wealth by the Shia OR Sunni, and they have wanted autonomy for many years.
Needless to say, Turkey is not about to let that happen without a struggle.

In South America, Hugo Chavez and company have warmly embraced Tehran and her anti-Americanism. Likewise, they applaud the Iranian national pastime of trying to destroy the Jews.
Keep in mind that these nations account for a significant percentage of world-wide oil production, a threat they love to dangle above the world's economy.
If these nations are so cozy in the spotlight, is it any stretch to imagine they are cooperating on less "above board" enterprises, such as providing logistical and material support for terrorist groups?
Recent reports suggest that is in fact what they are doing.

In Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, the terrorist groups have found a perfect playground.
The events portrayed in the film "Black Hawk Down" are not history, they are still unfolding as I write this. Ethnic cleansing, mass starvation, rival warlords, rampant AIDS and drug usage abound.
In these climates, various terror groups make their plans, recruit and train their jihadis. It is in places like these that they take root and spread like a cancer, all while the U.N. has nothing better to do than condemn Israel for defending herself from the very same cancer.
An "African Taliban" has grown to prominence right under the nose of the world, and they are being armed as I write this, and as the U.N. focuses elsewhere.

Terrorist groups have, under the post 9/11 scrutiny of world governments and financial institutions, diversified their portfolios.
Sources of funding now include drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, identity theft, arms sales, Internet prescription scams, Internet charity scams, counterfeit DVDs and even legitimate businesses operating as fronts.
Another favorite source of income is the theft of U.N. and U.S humanitarian aid, which is ripped from the hands of needy Muslims, then sold on the black market to finance their agenda of "jihad in the name of Allah".
Counterfeit money is yet another source of terrorist funds, and U.S. Treasury Department officials have even commented on the high quality counterfeit U.S. bills produced by Hizbollah.
As always, a large percentage of terrorist funding comes from charities and the "off the books" support of nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar and so on.
Even you and I are doing our part to finance terror operations.

Bob Baer is a former CIA operative with 25 years of experience operating in the Middle East. He is probably best known for his novel "See No Evil", which was the inspiration for the film "Syriana".
In his book "Sleeping With The Devil - How Our Government Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude", Baer illustrates how a percentage of the money we pay for oil is funneled to groups like al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, The Muslim Brotherhood and IMU.
He also illustrates how every administration since Carter has been turning a blind eye to the trouble brewing in Saudi Arabia, and across the wider region, all for the sake of cheap oil.
As with everything in the Middle East, the money trail is long and convoluted, so I will not endeavor to map it out here. Instead, I strongly recommend reading Baer's book, if you want a real eye-opener.
I'm not sure I agree with all of Baer's conclusions, but his qualifications cannot be easily disputed, thus his assertions bear consideration.
If even a small percentage of what he claims is accurate, there is a major shit-storm brewing in Saudi Arabia, and our economy will surely fall victim when it arrives.
On a massive scale, comparable to the Great Depression.

Hate is being preached in mosques and madrassas all over the world. Hate for the West in general, but particularly for America, their "Great Satan".
During the 80's and 90's, the Saudi government, among others, funded the opening of thousands of Wahhabi maddrasas, with the sole intent of indoctrinating the next generation of jihadis. To the followers of ibn Abd-Al-Wahhab, children are no more than cannon fodder in their archaic war of religious fanaticism and global conquest.
In Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and even China, the Wahhabi doctrine of death is being preached to the entire eastern hemisphere... and right in our back yards. Not all of those Saudi funded mosques were built in the east.

One finds little solace looking closer to home.
Jihadis are recruiting in our jails and from within mosques scattered around the country.
They hold meetings in convention halls and at universities, where they openly recruit, collect "charitable funds" and distribute jihadist literature and video tapes of bin Laden sermonizing.
Their speeches consist of the most virulent hate-speak, directed at America, Israel and the West collectively. They openly march in support of Hizbollah and Hamas, burn American flags and call for "Death to America".

Our universities have been infiltrated by these preachers of hate, and the call to jihad is spreading on campuses, in union buildings and in classrooms around the country.
They have entrenched themselves in our faculties, and they use the same freedoms they so despise to shield themselves... with a little help from the ACLU and other civil liberties groups.
A little research shows that many of these civil liberties groups are in fact fronts for well known Communist, Socialist and Marxist groups from the sixties, with well established reputations for anti-American bias. But that's a long story for another day.
These radical Islamist "scholars" are further aided and empowered by a left-leaning Supreme Court, determined to legislate our capitulation from the bench.

"Isolated" incidents of Muslim rage have persisted all over the country.
* One of the "D.C. Snipers", a convert to Islam named John Allen Mohammed, frequently burst into anti-American and anti-Semitic tirades during questioning. His accomplice espoused the same point of view.
* A Muslim man in a predominately Jewish suburb of Baltimore open fire in a theatre, killing one Jewish man.
* A Muslim man in Chappel Hill, North Carolina went "off-roading" on a University campus, wounding several people. He told police it was in retaliation for how America treats Muslims around the world.
* A Muslim man in Seattle open fire in front of a Jewish community center, killing one woman. He told police it was to protest Israel's actions in Lebanon.
* Several would-be Jihadis were arrested in Oregon, after using a local quarry as a training facility with their fully-automatic weapons.
These are just a small sampling of the so-called "isolated" incidents of radical Muslims waging their war on America.
Once classified by the police, the courts or the media as "isolated" or "random", these incidents rarely rise to the level of national news, and so these pieces of the puzzle go unnoticed by the public at large.

At the outset of the second Iraq war, Sgt. Asan Akbar decided to vent his displeasure with American foreign policy by tossing hand grenades and firing his M-16 into three tents where officers of the 101st Airborne Division slept, killing one and wounding more than a dozen of his fellow soldiers.
In 2004, Spc. Ryan G. Anderson was arrested after logging into chat rooms in an attempt to offer his services to al Qaeda.
A Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo was arrested in possession of "classified documents a chaplain should not have had".
D.C. sniper John Mohammed was trained by the U.S. military, and used that training to devastating effect, terrorizing the D.C. area and dominating the news for weeks.
It's not often mentioned, but it seems clear to me that the enemy has infiltrated our military to an unknown degree, and in fact we are probably providing some of the specialized training that they will later use against us.

One might think, "A handful of soldiers. Big deal.", but in this age of instant dissemination via the Internet, the knowledge of one becomes the knowledge of many with just the click of a mouse.
The advent of syndicated and freelance terrorism, coupled with the rapid expansion of computer technology over the past 10 years, affords the enemy a means of mass indoctrination and training never before possible. Any would-be jihadi can now easily find the training and expertise required to kill in the name of Allah.
As mentioned above, the Internet provides many avenues for financing terror, but the Internet also opens a new front in the war against the jihadis - the threat of cyber-terror.
With critical infrastructure and financial institutions still vulnerable to viruses, worms and hacker attacks, this threat is one of many that is rarely addressed and inadequately prepared for.

The Internet also provides the world's most powerful means for researching our vulnerabilities, and I can actually picture bin Laden and al-Zawahiri dancing the jig on the day Google Earth went live.
Sure, it ain't as sophisticated as CIA and DOD satellite imagery, but beggars can't be choosers.
And let's not forget the Internet provides the means to dilute the truth, with jihadis propagandizing on a global scale through blogs, videos, chat rooms, e-mail and bulletin boards.

The news media is partly to blame for the perception of this war against fundamentalist Islam, more specifically, they seem to not believe we are actually IN a war against fundamentalist Islam.
Each incident is presented out of context from the greater war we face with this virulent ideology, and it's historical roots:
* The Israel - Lebanon conflict.
* The war in Iraq.
* The Iranian nuclear issue.
* The fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
* The troubles in Darfur, Nigeria, Somalia, etc.
* The attacks on Jews (by Muslims) in Europe and elsewhere.
* The Pakistani / Indian conflict over Kashmir.
* The Korean missile test and nuclear proliferation issue.
* Chechnya's conflicts with Russia.
* The border / immigration issue.
* The issue of detainees at the Guantanamo facility.
* The price of oil and gas.
All of these issues, and a great many more, are interwoven, a tapestry that we call "The War On Terror"... but what is in fact a war on Islamic fundamentalism.
Terror is merely the tool, the weapon they use to wage their war.

I'd like to believe in the basic goodness of man, so I will choose to believe that most of the Western media's collaboration with the enemy propaganda machine is through naivete or outright stupidity:
* A CNN reporter runs blindly through the streets of Beirut, because a Hizbollah member tells him they are about to be bombed by Israeli jets. The film footage would have been much less intense had the audience known that no such attack was forthcoming, and there were no Israeli jets in the area.
* An old Lebanese woman is photographed, arms raised in despair over the destruction of her home by the Israelis... and the same woman is photographed days later, bemoaning the destruction of a second home in the same neighborhood.
I guess she was a slumlord.
* A Lebanese photographer doctors a photo in a manner so blatant it is immediately discovered by many bloggers, yet the editors of Reuters used it without a second thought. Once the photographer's ethics had come into question, it was discovered that many other images he doctored had been printed by Reuters and other news agencies. The images were pulled, and the photographer fired, but the damage had already been done.
* When the Israelis inadvertently bombed a building containing civilians, the media rushed to report the Lebanese claim of 60 dead, causing an international outrage. It was later learned that less than half that number had been killed, but media retractions were barely muttered, and quickly buried.
Nor were questions raised by the total lack of male casualties in that number.
When news surfaced that the building had actually collapsed some 7 hours after it had been bombed, few questions were raised by what most would consider a remarkable occurrence.
* A few days later, every news channel played and re-played video of the Lebanese leader crying (literally) to an Arab summit that an Israeli bombing raid had killed 40 civilians. A few hours later it was reported (once) that the death toll was in fact only 2.
* An iconic photo of a limp Lebanese "victim" being pulled from rubble is proven false when said "victim" is shown in a later photo, at a different location, walking around with absolutely no injuries.
* The preponderance of images featuring children's toys (often in pristine condition) sitting atop mounds of rubble seems to raise no eyebrows, yet apparently only the Lebanese can afford toys for their children, as I have yet to see a single such photo highlighting the destruction in Israeli towns, caused by the Hizbollah's rockets.
* De facto embeds travelling with Hizbollah "handlers" point the camera where Hizbollah says to point it, and nowhere else.
In spite of the fact that everyone knew Hizbollah was operating in civilian centers, and in civilian garb, the media was in a frenzy when a single photo was smuggled out, clearly showing Hizbollah fighters in civilian clothing, perched on an anti-aircraft emplacement in the middle of a town.
* Not a night goes by when the cable news channels fail to make mention of Israel's former occupation of Lebanon, citing it as the initial reason for Hizbolla's formation.
However, only rarely is it mentioned that Israel's invasion, and subsequent occupation, were in response to cross-border raids and rocket attacks (by the PLO) from within Lebanon.
If that sounds familiar to you, it might be because that is exactly the cause of this "new" conflict !
* The BBC, in lock-step with the U.N., constantly finds moral equivalence between a U.N. member state, struggling against fanatics who have vowed to destroy her by any means, and a terror group using civilians as human shields, while lobbing rockets at civilian populations from across international borders.
* The other night, CNN showed an abundance of photos and video of dead Lebanese children without shying away, yet later the same night, in a program about Hizbollah, they shrank from showing the full video image of CIA station chief William Buckley, after having been been tortured and murdered by Hizbollah. Instead, they only showed his feet dangling above the floor.
Thus rage toward Israel is incited, and rage against Hizbollah muted... through deliberate editorial choice.

All of these examples relate to the reporting on the current hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah, but that is just one piece of a vastly more complex puzzle.
In every other facet of the larger war, the western media is doing an equally abysmal job.
From slanted coverage born of blatant bias, to subtle oversights and outright fabrications, the media war is being lost here at home and abroad.
The jihadis are willing to die for their cause, and they are counting on the squeamishness of the decadent West to cause us to wither and withdraw in the face of a long, dirty battle.
And the media, whether through duplicity or naivete, are helping the enemy to dispirit America, in what will prove to be a very long war:
* The constant drum-beat of negativity from Iraq, with nary a footnote to the tremendous job we have done toward rebuilding that broken and dysfunctional nation.
* The flagrant disregard for national security when releasing sensitive information about government anti-terror programs.
* The constant polling of every decision made by our government, and every action taken, with questions designed to polarize responses.
These are just a few instnaces of our media playing the role of Tokyo Rose. To Americans, the media shows a collection of isolated incidents, presented to heighten tension. To the international community, the media shows a nation divided, and paralyzed by political correctness. And to the jihadists, the media shows us as easy prey.

This is not my first blog post relating to the "War On Terror", nor will it be my last.
In the film "Fight Club", Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, laments the fact that his generation has no Great War, no Great Depression... no great cause to fight for.
The film pre-dates 9/11, but it does not predate the war on terror which, by my estimate, truly began with the formation of Israel.
I find it somehow ironic that in "Fight Club", Tyler Durden ultimately turns to terrorism in response to this generation's lack of a great cause... yet the "War On Terror" is our generation's great cause.

We are in a war that was declared on us decades ago, though it took 3000 corpses, two fallen towers and a gaping hole in the Pentagon to open our eyes to that fact.
And since that time, we seem to have drifted off to sleep again... yet each day without a successful attack brings us one day closer to the next one.
As our collective eye drifts off the ball, we are in danger of losing this battle to an enemy who is focused, educated, well financed, media and tech savvy, battle hardened, fanatically devoted... and ultimately, deadly.
Our faith in our own strength is our greatest weakness, as so many Americans fail to recognize that we could actually LOSE this global war, and with it our way of life.

Posted by: Kafir at 09:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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