A spike has recently occurred in Muslim-American terrorism in the USA. For example, on January 9, 2012, a US-naturalized Kosovar Muslim terrorist was arrested in Florida, while plotting to bomb night clubs in Tampa – a hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood activities and organizations. In December, 2011, the DEA arrested 30 Tampa used-car dealers involved in a Hezbollah drug money laundering. Tampa is the home base of the US Central Command, located at nearby MacDill Air Force Base. In November, 2011, an Al-Qaeda American sympathizer was arrested, in New York, for conspiring to bomb police stations and post offices. This wave of terrorism follows the June, 2010 arrest of eight Muslim terrorists in North Carolina, the May, 2010 foiled Times Square car bombing, the November, 2009 massacre of thirteen soldiers at Ft. Hood, etc.
It has been suggested that Islamic rage and terrorism is triggered by US policies toward Muslim nations. However, The surge in anti-US Islamic terrorism, and the proliferation of Islamic terrorist sleeper cells and training camps in the US and Canada, occur in spite of the US-led bombing of Serbia, which yielded independence to the Muslim-dominated Bosnia and Kosovo, and despite the mega-billion dollar US assistance to the Mujahideen, which ended Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Moreover, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who opposed the war in Iraq and supported Palestinian demands, was inaugurated in June 2007, and was greeted by three Muslim terrorists-engineered car bombs in London and Glasgow. Notwithstanding the generous US foreign aid to Arab countries and to the Palestinian Authority, and irrespective of President Carter’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran which facilitated the rise to power of Khomeini, the US is increasingly referred to as “the enemy of Allah” and “a modern day Crusader.” According to the leading historian of Islam, Prof. Bernard Lewis, Islam stipulates that “the duty of God’s soldiers is to dispatch God’s enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them—that is to say, the afterlife.”
The most-frequently mentioned (supposed) cause of anti-US Islamic terrorism is the US support of Israel and the US policy towards the Palestinians. Nevertheless, 9/11 was planned while President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians the entire store; the October 12, 2000 murder of seventeen sailors on the USS Cole happened when Israel and the US offered unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David; the August 27, 1998 blowing up of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place (257 murdered and over 4,000 injured) while President Clinton was brutally pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu; the 1995/6 murder of 19 US soldiers in Riyadh and Khobar Towers, were carried out while Prime Minister Peres implemented unprecedented concessions; the February 1993 Twin Towers bombing (6 murdered and over 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted the pre-Oslo talks with the PLO; the December 21, 1988 PanAm-103 (270 murdered) terrorism took place a few months following the groundbreaking recognition of the PLO by the US; the April/October 1983 murder of 300 Marines and 58 French soldiers, in the car-bombings of the US Embassy and Marines and French military headquarters in Beirut, occurred while the US military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the US Administration blasted Israel for its war against the PLO.
Terrorists bite the hand that feeds them.
Irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian issue, the US-Israel friendship, Israel’s policies or existence, Islamic terrorism has afflicted the Middle East and the entire globe – including North, Central and South America – for fourteen centuries, long before the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Islamic rogue regimes view the US as their key moral and strategic adversary. US-style freedom of religion, expression, markets and association constitutes a lethal threat to all Islamic regimes. Their territorial imperialism has suffered a severe setback by the US military, economic and diplomatic dominance. They abhor the dominance of “the infidel” over the “true believer,” which they consider morally blasphemous and strategically wrong. They are determined to push the US out of the Persian Gulf, the Mideast, the Indian Ocean and Africa, in order to advance their megalomaniac aspirations. Humiliating a Super Power – preferably on its own soil – would be critical to the resurrection of Islamic grandeur. Therefore, no US pressure on Israel would spare Washington the wrath of rogue Islamic regimes; it could, however, transform Israel from a strategic asset to a strategic liability.
While most Moslems are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims, supported by Muslim states. Other than Turkey, all Islamic regimes ascended to – and maintained – power through violence. They believe in total submission to God and to them who rule, supposedly, by divine prescription. They terrorize those whom they cannot integrate domestically and externally.
The insistence on engaging – and not on confronting – rogue regimes; denying the existence of global Islamic terrorism; contending that Jihad is a process which purifies the soul; assuming that Islamic terrorists represent a Muslim minority; and delulding oneself that the Palestinian issue is a root cause of anti-US Islamic terrorism, undermines moral clarity, and therefore impairs operational clarity. It yields headwind to Western democracies and tailwind to terrorists.
