7 May 2013 –
Odds ‘n Ends
The notable terms of the
week in administration news events are “self-radicalized” and terrorist “network.” The President used them in a news conference
to describe the Tsarnaev brothers as “loners” whose bombings of the Boston
Marathon were not tied to any “larger network” of international
terrorists. My intelligence and terrorist
analysis ears perked right up when the President tried to separate the Boston
Bombers’ actions from direct participation in larger terrorist networks. The two terms as the President used them,
“self-radicalized” and “network, are misleading. They downplay the serious connections between
local acts of violence and the larger movements of radical Islamists and their goal
of conquering the world and establishing universal Sharia law.
All my experience in the
intelligence business confirms the salient facts about the Boston bombings that
are being reported by the press: The Brothers Tsarnaev did not commit their
atrocious crimes on their own. They were aided, abetted, encouraged, and
trained by an international society of radical Islam that hates the United
States. Nonetheless, the brothers, as
immigrants and then as citizens, fed on the U.S.’s generous and free society
while their radicalism coalesced and then when they planned their crimes. Local imams, immigrant families, and other
immigrant friends all exist in liberal, free societies such as the United
States while they sow the seeds for those countries’ downfall.
This radical society of
Islam is loosely formed, worldwide, and far more durable than most Westerners
assume. In the West, elements of violent,
radical Islam are found living among and drawing cultural sustenance and cover
from the larger Moslem community. To
provide propaganda and sectarian support to those who want to adhere themselves
to a particular jihadist movement, there are firmly ensconced nodes of
decision-making in the overall network.
There, self-styled imams and voices of radical doctrine carefully craft then
distribute radical messages on the internet, through zip drives, and through
word of mouth throughout the Moslem diaspora.
Wherever the message falls on listening ears, the network is sustained. It is a loosely jointed, but powerful method
of indoctrinating vulnerable people into becoming radicals and then suicide
bombers. Whether the perpetrators of
violence are killed or not, they are considered expendable, suicide bombers by
virtually all leaders of radical Islam.
The radical Islamic network
is not a corporation with bylaws and letters of incorporation, operating openly
under the rule of governmental law. It
more closely resembles multiple franchise operations, but one where the local
franchisee and the head office usually compete constantly over control of the
brand and its direction. Nor is it a
sovereign nation, in the western version of that term, with organized and
commanded military forces and diplomatically accepted ambassadors. It is a movement. It is a many-headed Hydra with one heart, but
with many maws that bite from different directions.
Depending on the flavor
of the month, parts of the movement are led by someone as well-written and
charismatic as the Ayatollah Khomeini or Osama Bin Laden. Or, they are led by colorless dogmatists whose
close followers have a talent for organization.
Either way, these leaders await the moment when their fervent followers—read
Brothers Tsarnaev multiplied by the thousands—eventually topple a government. Then, in Khomeini’s case, the leaders move in
to fill the void, establish a dictatorship, and establish their version of
Sharia law. It is a messy method,
replete with martyrs. It remains to be
seen if radical islamists will be as successful outside the Moslem world as
they recently have been inside.
Parts of the movement are
well-funded. Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist
Wahabbist royal family funds madrassas and mosques throughout the world in
which radical Islam is preached and abetted.
Lesser strains of radicalism are struggling to buy monthly internet
access, but still may find enough money to build bombs out of pressure
cookers. What must be understood,
however, is that the radical Islamic movement, in all its parts, is
fundamentally opposed to western secular democracy. They have shown no compunction toward
sheltering, funding, training, or abetting perpetrators of violence against western
secularism or democracy, whether those symbols are found in the West or in
Islamic countries. The more investigators dig into the Islamic community in
Boston, the more they will find such strains of radicalism, which, indeed it
will be shown, aided the Tsarneav brothers in their horrific acts of
violence. Those are the “self-radicalized”
terrorists and the “network(s)” that President Obama was referring to. The movement continues whether the Obama
administration admits it or not.
Plan B Contraceptives
A U.S. District Judge in
Brooklyn, Edward Korman, ruled eleven days ago that the Food and Drug
Administration must make the “morning after” emergency contraception drug, Levonorgestrel—also known as Plan B—available over-the-counter
without a prescription to “women” of “all reproductive age,” specifically to
those fifteen years and older. He
commented in his ruling that the previous FDA policy to provide Plan B medicine
without a prescription only to “women” seventeen and older as “arbitrary,
capricious and unreasonable.” His Honor
Judge Korman may indeed be on firm, activist legal ground by saying that to
allow one minor, a seventeen-year-old, to purchase this pill on her own but to
deny a fifteen or sixteen-year old minor that same opportunity fits the classic
legal definition of “arbitrary and capricious.”
But, the moral and traditionally legal ruling would have been to
restrict the policy completely for all minors.
The right thing to do would have been to nullify the existing FDA policy
for seventeen-year olds as well.
The judge should have referred
to the fact all existing laws establish the age of majority as at least eighteen
in all states. He should have told the
FDA that for a federal agency to implement medical and reproductive policies
that allow minors of any age to buy such drugs over-the counter is wrong; it
further blurs the lines between minors and adults in society and further erodes
the rights and responsibilities of parents toward their minor children in such fundamental
issues as sexual relations and their consequences. That would have been a decision to read!
I used quotation marks
above with the word “women.” Female minors used to go by another name: girls. Seventeen-year-old girls; fifteen-year-old
girls; ten-year-old girls. Another gender
nonspecific name is, hmm, let’s see…how about children? These minors, who are being told that it is
now more convenient to have sex and avoid the unpleasant consequences of
pregnancy, are children. A
fifteen-year-old is a child. Such activist
rulings as Judge Korman’s will make parents increasingly irrelevant in the
lives of their children and endanger children’s chances for a healthy and happy
adulthood.
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