Armageddon

by Dick Morris

  Meanwhile, Israel faces a growing international movement to treat it with the same harsh measures as were meted out to South Africa in the ’80s for its policy of apartheid. Arab apologists have long condemned Zionism as racist, and that rhetoric has blossomed into the BDS movement that seeks to “boycott, divest, and sanction” the only democracy in the Middle East. The BDS movement tries to persuade corporations, colleges, and pension funds to divest themselves of investments that benefit Israel while boycotting Israeli products and services, particularly those from the West Bank.

  Such heated rhetoric and outrageous proposals seem to come with the territory in the Middle East, but Hillary’s successor, John Kerry, has increasingly enlisted in the effort to isolate Israel. In July 2015, he warned Israel that its opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and its settlement construction policies would only stoke efforts to increase its global isolation. “I fear that what could happen is if Congress were to overturn it, our friends in Israel could actually wind up being more isolated and more blamed,” Mr. Kerry said in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.24

  Kerry further implied that he, as secretary of state, would do nothing to stop the BDS movement from gaining steam. He even implied that he might endorse United Nations’ recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate government of the West Bank. With such provocative words coming from the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, Hillary’s silence—despite her avowed support for Israel—speaks volumes. Obama’s, Kerry’s, and Hillary’s efforts to appease the Arabs have led to nothing good. Far from softening Arab resolve to destroy Israel—and its chief ally, the United States—the policy has led where appeasement always leads: to empowering the bad guys.

  In fact, ISIS is making huge gains in its effort to bring its brand of barbaric terrorism to America’s shores. Both Obama and Hillary are terrified of the left wing of the Democratic Party—Hillary all the more so as the Bernie Sanders campaign gained momentum. Determined to appease their own party’s left as surely as they appease America’s Arab enemies, Obama and Hillary are throwing open the doors of America to a refugee population from Syria that inevitably will include ISIS terrorists salted among their number.

  Now, with Obama’s help and Hillary’s approval, ISIS operatives are breeching our borders with impunity, bringing terror to far flung corners of our nation.

  Obama and Hillary Are Letting Terrorists into America

  Even as President Obama refuses to identify those who wear suicide vests filled with bombs and detonate them in our malls and streets as “Islamic extremists” or “Islamic terrorists,” he works overtime to appease the Islamic community. We are seeing the results of his weakness.

  The contrast between the assiduous efforts of President George W. Bush and Obama’s lackadaisical approach to the issue shows up in the grisly results. After 9/11, only three Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists on US soil during the Bush administration. Under Obama, the total has swelled to 42 (as of December 10, 2015). This explosion of terrorism will dominate the 2016 election. It has edged out everything else as the key issue in the coming election.

  The ISIS brand of terrorism is more threatening than even the al-Qaeda model that destroyed the World Trade Center. Even as we learned to contain and frustrate large terror plots like 9/11, ISIS has pioneered the “lone-wolf” attack using simple armaments and small groups of suicide attackers who enter crowded auditoriums, gyms, or classrooms and annihilate dozens of innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The vast intelligence apparatus the United States and its European allies has developed is finding it hard to spot such lone-wolf attacks and harder still to disrupt them and arrest the terrorists before they carry out their deadly missions. The al-Qaeda model of terrorism required vast organization, intricate planning, and lots of equipment, all making the plotters vulnerable to detection. But the lone wolf needs nothing more than a gun, so he can be impossible to spot before he strikes.

  A multitude of lone-wolf attacks can paralyze America, just as the DC area was frozen in fear in 2002 as snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo proceeded to pick off 13 people, one by one, as they pumped gas or mowed their lawns. Ultimately, lone-wolf attacks could induce us all to be looking over our shoulders—more menacing than having to look skyward after 9/11.

  Once the gunfire died down in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March of this year, we all realized that the terror threat was back, as bad as ever. But as we face this threat, we know that, while Muslims are only nine-tenths of 1% of our population, they constitute the vast majority of these terrorists. Their mission is, simply put, to kill the infidel in order to establish a global Islamic caliphate. While the vast majority of Muslims are peace loving, we cannot forget what Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, said: “While not all Democrats are horse thieves, in my experience, all horse thieves are Democrats.”25

  Are American Muslims peaceful? Overwhelmingly, yes. But it only takes a handful to mount a terrorist attack. The Pew Research Foundation asked American Muslims the following:26 “Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?”

  Here’s how US Muslims answered:

  Often justified

  1%

  Sometimes justified

  7%

  Rarely justified

  5%

  Never justified

  81%

  While it is comforting—and we must bear in mind—that four of five say violence is “never justified,” another 13% could approve of it in certain circumstances, and 8% say it is either “often” or “sometimes” justified.

  With almost three million Muslims in the United States, that’s a lot of potential terrorists.

  (And consider the inherent bias in the survey. Who is going to admit, in effect, to supporting a crime in an interview with a stranger who could work for the FBI?)

  The Middle East has become a cauldron of terror, an incubator for mass murderers who are indoctrinated to sacrifice their lives for the Jihadist cause. Trained as terrorists, they are skilled at the art of random destruction.

  Our problem is how to stop this flow of death into our country. One approach, of course, would be to destroy ISIS in its lair in Syria and Iraq. But President Obama, elected on a peace platform, is so eager to preserve his legacy as having ended the Iraq War that he is loath to start another one. Relying on very limited air strikes and resolutely refusing to commit significant numbers of ground troops, he is unlikely, unqualified, and unable to bring the kind of determination we need to stop ISIS before it kills again. So we are left, by the president’s refusal to act, with no option but to try to stop potential terrorists from coming into our nation.

  Would Hillary be any better? Not very likely. Her opposition to ground troops in the Middle East is already noted and her cooperation in Obama’s policy of appeasing terrorists is well documented. With ISIS working to infiltrate its highly trained, motivated, and demented terrorists into our country, immigration is the new national security issue of our time.

  Donald Trump has ignited enthusiasm in tens of millions of Americans with his proposal that we ban all Muslims from entering the United States, at least for now. Nationally, the latest U-Gov/Huffington Post poll revealed that, by 51–45, Americans support “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”27

  Currently, the State Department designates Iran, Syria, and Sudan as nations that have “provided support for international terrorism.”28 Cuba, Yemen, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya had been on the list but were removed by Obama, taking, on faith, the promises
of their despotic leaders to behave themselves. All these nations should also be subject to an immigration ban. We should ban all immigration from people of any religion from nations in which terrorists operate, whether with or without government sanction. We should keep all immigrants, students, workers, and tourists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Nigeria, and other such countries out of the United States. We must not be deluded by protests from these nation’s governments that they too oppose terrorism. Where terrorists have a significant presence, we cannot vet who is coming into our country and we must keep people from such nations out of America.

  We are under no obligation to admit anyone to the United States. We can exclude whomever we want. And we should. Hillary will ask, “Where will the Syrian and other refugees go?” To the Muslim world! Let Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Turkey, and even Russia take them. What if they refuse? Exactly how is that our problem? Our problem is with those who came here and perpetrated acts of horror and terror. Read the list of immigrant/terrorists compiled by Leo Hohmann for WND.com.29

  • Twenty-four-year-old Muhammad Abdulazeez killed five US servicemen in Chattanooga in 2015. He came from Kuwait.

  • An immigrant from Bangladesh tried to incite people to travel to Somalia and conduct violent jihad against the United States. He was arrested in Texas in 2014.

  • In July 2015, a Cuban immigrant inspired by Islamic extremists plotted to explode a backpack bomb filled with nails on a beach in Key West.

  • An immigrant from Ghana plotted a terrorist attack on US soil. He attacked an FBI agent during a search incidental to the arrest of his fellow terrorist, Munther Omar Saleh, who was charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.

  • A Sudanese immigrant pleaded guilty in June 2015 to providing material support to ISIS.

  • A Muslim refugee couple from Bosnia, along with five of their relatives living in Missouri, Illinois, and New York, were charged in February 2015 with sending money, supplies, and smuggled arms to ISIS.

  • A Muslim immigrant from Yemen, along with six other refugees living in Minnesota, was charged in April 2015 with conspiracy to travel to Syria and to provide material support to ISIS.

  • A Somali refugee was charged on July 23, 2014, with leading an al-Shabaab terrorist fundraising conspiracy in the United States, with monthly payments directed to the Somali terrorist organization.

  • A Kazakhstani immigrant conspired to purchase a machine gun to shoot FBI and other law enforcement agents.

  • Two female immigrants, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen, pledged to explode a propane tank bomb on US soil. They were arrested in April 2015.

  • An Uzbek man in Brooklyn raised funds for terror organizations.

  • The Boston Bombers were invited in as asylum seekers. The younger brother applied for citizenship and was naturalized on September 11, 2012. The older brother had a pending application for citizenship when he struck.

  • A Moroccan Muslim who came to the United States on a student visa was arrested and charged in April 2014 with plotting to blow up a university and a federal courthouse.

  • Six members of Minnesota’s Somali American refugee community have recently been charged with trying to join ISIS.

  • An Uzbek refugee living in Boise, Idaho was arrested in 2013 and charged with providing support to a terrorist organization in the form of teaching terror recruits how to build bombs to blow up US military installations.

  • A teenage American citizen living in York, South Carolina, whose family emigrated from Syria, was sentenced in April 2015 for plotting to support ISIS and rob a gun store to kill members of the American military.

  • A Muslim immigrant from Syria living in Ohio, who later applied for and received US citizenship, was accused by federal prosecutors of planning to “go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.”

  • A college student who came to America as a refugee from Somalia attempted to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon.

  • Immigrants from Afghanistan and the Philippines were convicted on September 25, 2014, for trying to “join Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to kill Americans.”

  • An Iraqi immigrant was arrested in May 2015 for lying to federal agents about pledging allegiance to ISIS and his travels to Syria.

  • Two Pakistani American brothers living in New York were sentenced in June 2015 for plotting to detonate a bomb in New York City.

  • A Yemeni immigrant was arrested in September 2014 in Rochester, New York for attempting to illegally buy firearms to try to shoot American military personnel.

  How many more of these examples do we need until we all see the need to restrict immigration from terror-harboring countries? Notice how geographically spread out these threats are—no longer concentrated in New York City, but spread to all parts of our nation. How did that happen? How did we export terrorists to formerly calm and loyal parts of America? Our own government did. In the refugee resettlement program, the federal government decides who to send where and makes an effort to spread the refugees out across the nation to hasten their integration into our population. Instead, we have enabled their infiltration!

  Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have lined up to oppose restrictions on immigrants and in favor of opening our arms to refugees even if there is a risk that they are terrorists in disguise. But Muslim immigrants keep pouring into the United States. Breitbart.com reported that, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the United States has issued green cards (i.e., permanent resettlement documents) to “more than 1.5 million [migrants] from majority Muslim nations” since 9/11.30

  The United States has awarded 11,000 green cards to immigrants from Afghanistan (mostly Muslim) from 2009 to 2013. We have also given green cards to 83,000 Iraqis and the same number of Pakistanis in the same time period. Turks got 22,000 green cards and Kazaks got 7,000.31

  Hillary conditions her support for ongoing Muslim immigration by saying that we can vet those who want to come here. Vet? What nonsense! How on Earth can we vet people coming in from Syria? We can’t just call up their high school guidance counselor or pull up their Social Security employment history. We have no way of separating real refugees from terrorists posing as refugees.

  Former Homeland Security Administrator Tom Ridge made clear in a radio interview last December just how absurd Hillary’s claim that we will vet Syrian refugees really is. He said, “I’m just not sure that we’ve got the background information. . . . They talk about screening. They talk about being able to review everybody in a timely way. I’m just not confident they have sufficient information for law enforcement, the intelligence community, to do effective screening. . . . A pause for refugees from that part of the world is very appropriate at this time.”32 And the FBI warned Congress on October 21, 2015, that “admitting people displaced by the Syrian civil war into the U.S. is a highly dubious venture, fraught with risks that terrorist fighters could slip in posing as ‘refugees.’”33

  There is a vast difference between immigrants and refugees. Immigrants are admitted to the United States legally, pursuant to legislation adopted by Congress and administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many evade ICE and enter illegally, but they are still immigrants, subject to deportation if they are apprehended. Refugees come here as a result, not of congressional legislation, but under agreements between the administration and the United Nations, not subject to congressional approval. And refugees are eligible to become citizens while illegal immigrants are, of course, not. Obama and Hillary are using refugees to circumvent congressional restrictions on immigration to get more Muslims into America.

  Why would they want to do that? Pew Research has found the answer: 70% of Muslims, in their survey, said they mainly vote Democrat while only 11% sided with the Republicans.34

  Of course, Hil
lary cannot change her record. But she can try to change her positions. During the primaries, Hillary was obliged to toe the Obama line on terror and immigration. With Bernie Sanders crawling up her left flank, she could not move to the center. But what about the general election? Will she change her support for immigration or her refusal to send ground troops to fight ISIS? She’ll want to. But it will be tough. Will Hillary seek to maximize the enthusiasm and turnout of her liberal base, as Obama did, or pivot to the center as her husband did in 1996?

  If she hopes to move to the center on issues like ISIS, terror, and immigration, she will pay the price in liberal voter turnout. Many on the Left—a notoriously picky bunch—will feel that they have nobody to vote for and stay home. She can’t mount an Obama-like crusade by standing in the middle. Even if she chooses to modify her position, her past record of repeated flip-flops undermines her credibility. Those who had agreed with her before she changed are likely to be disenchanted as she moves to the center. And those who used to disagree with her will find themselves very skeptical of her newfound centrism.

  Now that terrorism has resurfaced with a close nexus to the immigration issue, the combination of the two will work even more strongly on behalf of the Republicans in 2016. The Democratic Party and Hillary have gone over a cliff and are articulating ideas and policies so totally out of sync with the average American that it is hard to conceive of their winning an election on that platform. Americans do not feel a duty to open their borders to possible terrorists and will not vote for anyone who does.