This tenth anniversary of 9/11witnessed the further deracination of the term “Islamic” from the official lexicon of counterterrorism. Much of the mainstream media coverage and official commemorations steered clear of using the correct term “Islamic terrorism." The blogosphere persists in using this appropriate term for identifying the 19 well educated, middle class Salafist Muslim young men from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America that took 2,977 innocent lives. They were simply deemed ‘terrorists’ according to the media and commemoration presenters including former President Bush and President Obama. The coverage focused appropriately on the grief of the families who lost loved ones on 9/11, but nary a whisper about who were the perpetrators. All done for fear of being offensive to Muslims. This was misleading and foster denial evident in the comments made by David Beamer, father of Flight 93 victim, Todd Beamer in our NER interview.
Stephen Coughlin, castigated by Heshem Islam, former Muslim outreach aide to Bush Defense Undersecretary Gordon England as “a Christian zealot with a pen” was forced out as a consultant to the Joint Staff for his promulgation of the Threat Doctrine of Jihad. Coughlin drew attention to this deracination of the official government counterterrorism lexicon following the revelations of the 9/11 Commission Report. in the immediate aftermath of Maj. Nidal Hasan massacre at Fort Hood in November 2009 Coughlin noted this In an Iconoclast post,
In a brutal second briefing by Coughlin -see extracts here- the brief culminates in a devastating chart illustrating the depths of myopia our intelligence and counter terrorism agencies have sunk to in denying the threat and realities of Jihad.
Note how cleansed of Islamic Jihad the lexicons used by the FBI and the Intelligence community have become compared to the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004.
In another Iconoclast post, following a Florida security Council security briefing in West Palm Beach in January, 2010, a panel composed of Coughlin, counterterrorism investigative journalist Patrick Poole and former FBI agent John Guandolo drew attention to the ‘missing I word” from the initial Fort Hood massacre report issued by the Pentagon. We noted these comments from a Washington Times report by columnist Bill Gertz:
Patrick S. Poole, a counterterrorism consultant to government and law enforcement, said the Pentagon report did not address the problem of political correctness in the military "that allowed for Maj. Hasan's continued rise despite his poor performance." Mr. Poole said an "atmosphere of intimidation" exists in the military regarding Islamist threats that "prevented any substantive complaints to [Maj. Hasan's] increasingly extremist statements."
"Everyone along the way was content to give him a pass," Mr. Poole said.
Former Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr., who co-led a Pentagon review of the shooting, dismissed concerns that Maj. Hasan's religion was a factor in performance reviews during his career as an Army medical counselor.
When asked whether the immediate problem at Fort Hood, Texas, was Islamist radicalization, Mr. West declined to single out Islamists. "Our concern is not with the religion," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "It is with the potential effect on our soldiers' ability to do their job."
Mr. West said "radicalization of any sort" is the issue and that "our concern is with actions and effects, not necessarily with motivations."
Adm. Vernon E. Clark, a former chief of naval operations and the investigation's other co-leader, declined to answer when asked whether political correctness led to the Army security failures. He suggested that the matter is addressed in a secret annex to the report that he and Mr. West helped produce.
The only two persons of note to draw attention to this airbrushing treatment of Islamic terrorism during the tenth anniversary of 9/11 were Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Chairman of the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and former Bush Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who was at the Pentagon when Islamic terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the building killing 54 passengers and 125 military and civilian personnel.
The Obama administration’s fear of offending Muslims will hurt the U.S. war against terrorism, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Thursday in a speech blasting the president’s new counterterrorism strategy.
[. . .]
“The administration still refuses to call our enemy in this war by its proper name: violent Islamist extremism,” Lieberman said, speaking at a National Press Club event hosted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).
“To call our enemy ‘violent extremism’ is so general and vague that it ultimately has no meaning. The other term used sometimes is Al Qaeda and its allies. Now that’s better but it is still too narrow and focuses us on groups as opposed to what I would call an ideology, which is what we’re really fighting.”
[. . .]
“I assume the refusal of the administration to speak honestly about the enemy is based on its desire not to do anything that might feed into al Qaeda’s propaganda that we’re engaged in a cold war against Islam,” he said. “But that is so self-evidently a lie that we can and have refuted it and I think we’ve done so effectively.”
On Sunday’s Fareed Zakaria’s CNN program, Global Public Square, Rumsfeld excoriated both the Bush and Obama Administrations for not recognizing the 800 pound Gorilla of Islamic terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 and what followed in the asymmetrical wars we have fought in the Middle East and South Asia. As Rumsfeld emphasized this obsequious PCness has “gotten worse under President Obama.” All Zakaria could respond with was…..”But Obama killed Bin Laden.” To which Rumsfeld responded, “of course.”
Watch this mrc-tv video excerpt of this exchange between Rumsfeld and Zakaria on CNN’s GPS.
Then consider Muslim bashing criticism by Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR, mainstream and alternative media directed at serious events commemorating 9/11. One egregious example was the Pith in the Wind column, “Haters Gonna Hate at Franklin 9/11 Event”, published in the Nashville Scene weekly alternative publication.
A consortium of anti-Muslim groups will descend upon the Embassy Suites hotel in Franklin this Sunday afternoon for a sold-out Islamophobic circle jerk masquerading as a memorial service to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Hosted by local right-wing radio host Michael DelGiorno, the roster of speakers for "Remembering 9-11..." suggests that the gathering will eschew themes of peace, love and understanding in favor of holy war, discord and demagoguery.
Indeed, the line-up includes Charles Jacobs, a Boston-based anti-mosque activist; Melvin Bledsoe, father of convicted American jihadist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad; State Rep. Bill Ketron, a legislative opponent of that ever-creeping Sharia law; Tennessee Rep. Judd Matheny, who with Ketron forged Senate Bill 1028, whose original incarnation would've made adherence to Sharia law an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison; and conservative Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, pal of virulent anti-Islam Netherlands politician Geert Wilders.
That Franklin, Tennessee, Embassy Suites event, sponsored by the ACT! Middle Tennessee Chapter, drew an audience of over 500, where the truth was told about Islamic terrorism that killed thousands on 9/11 and during the past decade. Among the presenters were Melvin Bledsoe, father of the perpetrator of the Little Rock Arkansas mall lone Wolf Jihad attack and Daris Long, father of Army recruiter Pvt. Andrew Long killed by Bledsoe’s son. They shared the grief and threat of Islamic Da’wa that spawned this single act of Islamic terrorism and thousands more like it around the world since 9/11.
Daris Long, a 27 year Marine veteran who served in Somalia and other world conflict zones said in an AP interview before the Nashville event on 9/11:
. . he pities Muhammad’s family members because they are “victims in this as well as everyone else.”
“I don’t mean pity in the negative content,” he said. “I feel very badly for them, that this was visited upon them by their son. To me that’s the height of betrayal.”
So much for alleged “Muslim bashing.”
Such is the ignominy of the War on Islamic terrorism.
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