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News Roundup Special: The Orlando attacks and America’s head in the sand

This past week has filled me with dismay.

I thought I had really been beyond the point of being shocked by the media and the government colluding to set an agenda, but even I was surprised by the all-out push this week to turn the focus of the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida from, you know, THE TERRORIST, and to the gun issue. The reaction this week was totally different than when Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot up San Bernardino. I don’t know if it was because that target in that case was just boring regular American citizens or what, but the media went into a frenzy on the Orlando shooting in comparison.

I know I’m Sofrep’s resident Islamophobe guy who does not care for Islam, but I haven’t seen anything quite like the race to diminish the role of Islam in the Orlando terrorist attack in my life. I’m not sure if it’s going to take car bombs going off in the streets, or maybe 5 guys instead of 1 guy with long guns, a suitcase nuke, or what, but watching this week unfold has been… illustrative. I mean, we’re splitting hairs because Omar Mateen mentioned militant, violent Islamic groups that are opposed to one another? Really? As always, what follows is my opinion.

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This past week has filled me with dismay.

I thought I had really been beyond the point of being shocked by the media and the government colluding to set an agenda, but even I was surprised by the all-out push this week to turn the focus of the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida from, you know, THE TERRORIST, and to the gun issue. The reaction this week was totally different than when Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot up San Bernardino. I don’t know if it was because that target in that case was just boring regular American citizens or what, but the media went into a frenzy on the Orlando shooting in comparison.

I know I’m Sofrep’s resident Islamophobe guy who does not care for Islam, but I haven’t seen anything quite like the race to diminish the role of Islam in the Orlando terrorist attack in my life. I’m not sure if it’s going to take car bombs going off in the streets, or maybe 5 guys instead of 1 guy with long guns, a suitcase nuke, or what, but watching this week unfold has been… illustrative. I mean, we’re splitting hairs because Omar Mateen mentioned militant, violent Islamic groups that are opposed to one another? Really? As always, what follows is my opinion.

Sensing an opening to enact their long-desired curtailment of the second amendment, the media wasted no time. This was a golden opportunity. Not only would they be able to use this as a prop to enact their ban of the hated “AR-15” rifle, but look at the victims! Mainly gay, and some probably in the country illegally. Clearly, this was the NRA’s fault.

https://twitter.com/BKactual/status/743411585822101504

The democrats, too, wasted no time in exploiting the terrorist attack. Almost immediately, they began plotting on how to enact legislation to deprive Americans of their civil rights. Forget the fact that a long gun mass shooting is one of the rarest ways one can die by violence in America. Now, they want to make sure that anyone who is on the “watch list,” the “no-fly” list, the “extra-screening” list cannot buy a firearm. Never mind that people often have no idea that the are even on these lists. Never mind that a citizen can be placed on their by bureaucratic whim and spend YEARS fighting to get off of it. Never mind that this is basically ceding one of the most cherished rights of the contestation to the U.S. government, Something Has To Be Done.

I’ve said it in the past, and I’ll stand by it: I know that there is a risk in being a citizen of a nation that has second amendment rights like ours. I accept the possibility that, every once in a while, some nut with no criminal record is going to be able to purchase a weapon and kill people with it. What I can’t accept is the administration’s continued obstinacy in allowing entry huge numbers of people to enter the U.S. from parts of the world that really aren’t down with our way of life, while many more simply simply come on a visa and promptly disappear. This isn’t like Mexico. The U.S and Mexico have a long history together, with many shared geographical, cultural, and religious ties. Islam is an alien political system masquerading as a religion. There is no comparison.

This isn’t like the old days, where, once immigrants left Europe, they knew they were gone for good. They were never going back. They couldn’t stream tv shows in their native language from their goddamn iPhones or depend on a massive welfare state. It was sink or swim.

It’s completely different now.If it had been done smartly, as it was in the past, this wouldn’t have been a problem. With such profound differences in culture, you maintain very small numbers, allowing the new arrivals to acclimate to our way of life and how we do things. With massive numbers, as this administration is hell-bent on importing, they quickly form their own ethnic enclaves, and become insular and resentful. And then their kids, ostensibly U.S. citizens, grow up isolated in these enclaves, resentful and hating their lives, until they explode. Nadal Hassan did it. Syed Farook did it. And now, Omar Mateen did it. All first-generation “Americans” who held more allegiance to Islam than their own country.

And about that immigration. Donald Trump continues to be beaten over the head for his suggestion that we halt “muslim” immigration. As we’ve covered in the roundup before, this is a stupid way to put it, as it’s impossible to screen for “muslim.” But the point of halting immigration, at least temporarily, from certain countries should absolutely be implemented, and if this continues, it’s going to be. And for Obama and STUPID Paul Ryan, to stand up there and pompously proclaim, “that’s not who we are?” This is a war. This “that’s not who we are” bullshit is NOT GOOD ENOUGH anymore. Obama won’t even talk about it!

It’s absurd. We’ve done all sorts of things that our modern wiener journalism class would find hateful before. Jimmy Carter, of all people, halted the issuance of all Iranian visas, and demanded Iranians already in the United States present themselves to immigration authorities. As a matter of fact, you know who blocked immigration from a Muslim country? Barack Fucking Obama. We found out that two Iraqi bomb makers had snuck in under the Iraqi refugee program, so, in a rare bout of common sense, guess what we did? We freaking stopped accepting Iraqi visas until we figured out what the hell was going on. Jeez, where have I heard that before???

Rather than slowing down immigration from Muslim countries, this administration is accelerating it. Anyone who raises their hand to question this is rapidly met with the predictable left-wing playbook. Mock and smear opponents in the beginning, and a shrugging of shoulders in the end. It goes something like this:

1.) Problem becoming apparent, a few can see that it will become huge. “Oh, you’re overreacting! It’s just a few (insert whatever here.) You’re an alarmist.”

2.) Problem growing, too big to completely ignore. “LOOK OVER THERE AT THAT OTHER THING.”

3.) Problem enormous, cannot be ignored even by supporters. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

You see it over and over again. This happened with illegal immigration at the southern border. It happened with health care costs. It happened with the national debt. And now it’s happening with with free-agent Islamic terror attacks. I mean, Mark Steyn has been screaming about this happening in Europe for over a decade, only to be labeled an alarmist. Everything he’s predicted is coming true. And the failure to recognize the problem leads to this constant erosion of America’s civil rights, as the calls for more security make us less free every day.

And our terrible, foolish, predictably monolithic left wing media are aghast at the thought of modifying this open-border policy. Now, they’re fine with the US sending it’s best sons and daughters overseas to fight endless wars in far off lands, costing trillions of dollars in our treasury, and the blood of our people. The pentagon ALWAYS assures us that we’ll only be there for a hot minute, and then it turns into forever. That, the media barely talks about. But to suggest slowing down immigration from certain countrie is a hate crime. This is why journalism is a dying industry.

And for some reason, as easy as these attacks are to predict, nobody wants to talk about it. I said the following right after the San Bernardino attacks, back in December:

I’ll shut up now, and wait for the next time we have to sit around talking about the latest Islam-related atrocity. Because there’s ALWAYS a next time.

Indeed. Everyone sits around scratching their heads. And then we have to sit through another Islam-related slaughter. I’m just some asshole on the internet with a weekly column, and it’s plain as day to see that this is Islam radicalization is a huge problem, even with American-born Muslims. We’ve been lucky in the U.S., because most of these idiots still want to go fight in Syria. Sooner or later, and especially after a spectacular attack like Orlando, they’re going to realize they might as well stay right here. But not a single writer in major news media will talk like that.

The journalists all think exactly the same. I could turn on every cable news show, and it was a debate about guns. Dopey reporters were all going into gun stores, shocked at how easily they could exercise their constitutional rights. It was like a template. Guns are terrifying, and easy to get. Men are very penisy and warmongering, and something something homophobia. This could also be used to beat uncooperative politicians over the head with the LGBT card. Anderson Cooper was berating a Florida Attorney General, basically telling her that since she was against gay marriage, she was partly culpable for the shootings. (This will be a recurring theme now when it comes to gay/trans issues.) Not a single one questioned what was going on in the tiny mosques that Mateen attended, with a congregation of only 130 people and at least 2 terrorists.

Nobody questioned why we were letting tens of thousands of Afghanis into the country, with 99% of them supporting sharia law. Not one of them questioned how Mateen’s father, himself a guy who was open about his disdain for U.S. policies in Afghanistan, was able to fly back and forth to LA to do his wacky TV show, or his political connections. This was not an unknown man. Nobody questioned why the Mateen’s wife was not in police custody and has now seemingly vanished into thin air, after aiding him in the worst terrorist attack since 9/11. What the hell is going on?

Compare the reaction of the media to Orlando with Dylan Roof and the Charleston Church shooting. In Charleston, the media decided immediately who the true culprit was. It was racism, white supremacy, white privilege, or whatever the current term is, and all white people were complicit. The asshole said he hated black people and had one fucking picture of a Confederate Flag on his Facebook, and that was enough to tear down civil war statues, dig up confederate general graves, and take the fucking DUKES OF HAZARD off of television. Did the media sit around saying, “ah, he didn’t really mean that.. he had black friends!” Obviously not, nor should they have.

Roof was a single guy with few acquaintances, no money, and no support structure. Radical Islam has hundreds of millions of supporters all over the world, controls entire countries, and has trillions in assets. Juuuuuuuust a bit different. And the reaction is… silence.

Meanwhile,what happened in Orlando apparently had NOTHING to do with Islam. Even thought the shooter had a lifelong history of supporting Jihad, had called 911 explaining that he did his crime to honor the Islamic state and that is was payback for America’s continuing misguided middle eastern adventures, it had nothing to do with Islam. You know who I’m going to listen to when it comes to deciding whether or not it had to do with Islam? The guy shooting people while telling people he’s doing it for Islam. Watching people trying to digress on this point is hard to believe. I don’t care if he had no previous formal ties to ISIS or Al-Queada or whoever, when it came to the violence, he definitely put on the uniform, didn’t he? Isn’t that what matters in the end? Damn, you almost feel sorry for these terrorists. Here they are, committing Jihad in the name of Islam all over the world, and liberals are telling them that they don’t really mean that. It would be comical if people weren’t freaking dying every day.

See, I originally thought that this would cause much MORE media outrage towards Islamic terrorists, seeing as how the victims were primarily two of their favorite groups. We are talking about primarily gays people here, some of whom are possibly in the country illegally. I was completely wrong. Indeed, the bodies were still warm when the articles started coming out worrying about how this would affect Muslims. I know, really:

Can you believe that? Just for the hell of it, I went ahead and read the article, and two parts jumped out at me. The first thing was describing how a New York City neighborhood has been completely transformed in a very short time from one of the largest Norwegian communities in the United States into a Muslim enclave:

Once populated largely by Scandinavian immigrants, as well as those of Italian and Irish heritage, Bay Ridge has been transformed like so much of New York. There are nine mosques in the area now, according to Tony Carnes, a sociologist who publishes an online journal, “A Journey Through N.Y.C. Religions.” Many of the store signs on the avenues are written in Arabic.

Totally normal. I know it’s triple-plus ungood Bad Think to notice these things, but that jumped out at me. NINE MOSQUES. I went and checked: Bay Ridge is 2.1 square miles in size. Nine mosques! And everything is in arabic. That’s great. And far from being a shrinking violet as the dopey NY times writer is attempting to portray, one of the young Muslims hardly sounds that way when describing an ALLEGED confrontation her mother had in the street with a woman:

Salwa did not understand how a woman could verbally attack her mother, especially in what she considers her own neighborhood. “If she doesn’t want to be surrounded by Muslims,” Salwa said, “why is she in this community?’”

Doesn’t that say it all? I mean, that woman could have lived there as well, right? But she wasn’t a Muslim, therefore, she was an outsider. This chick’s family has been in the neighborhood for like ten minutes and they already own it. And of course, they all participate in the local Muslim political organizations, because, again, as I must keep repeating, Islam is just as much, if not more, a political system than a religion. It ain’t like being a goddamn Lutheran.

Which brings us to Barry O. While Obama was defiantly trumpeting his success over the Islamic State, his own dopy head of the CIA, John Brennan, in a damning testimony to Congress, painted a much bleaker picture. Far from being on the run, our military action against ISIS had utterly failed. The ideology of radical Islam has spread throughout the globe, into Southwest Asia and North Africa. After 15 years of fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control more territory than anytime since 2001. And thanks to idiotic mass immigration policies, combined with Western meddling in Islamic country affairs, foolish European leaders have imported an enormous chunk of the Muslim world into the very mainland of Europe, while American officials are eager to spread Muslims even into remote American areas. Why?

Obama is an embarrassment. He blames NOTHING about Islam. It was under his administration that FBI training material has been purged of references to Islam. The DHS, in a spectacular example of bad timing, just this week released a report urging the removal of the very WORD Jihad from all training manuals. It was obvious to me after the Fort Hood shooting, where it took the American President 6 years to finally admit it was a terroist act, that Obama had this weird side of him that was intensely indignant at the thought of people perhaps thinking that Islam might have a teensy-tiny problem with violence. Never mind that Boko Haram continues to rampage through Africa, never mind that Europe is one cunt hair away from another successful terrorist attack. Never mind that that car bombs and violence are part of the daily routine in Iraq.

Then there was this stunning paragraph in an otherwise-flattering piece by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. Keep in mind, Goldberg is a big fan of how Obama has dealt with Islam during his time in office, and knows the president intimately. He writes:

Obama believes that the clash is taking place within a single civilization, and that Americans are sometimes collateral damage in this fight between Muslim modernizers and Muslim fundamentalists.

Well. That’s certainly comforting.

This administration has been determined to downplay the threat of radical Islamic terrorism in America from the very moment they assumed power. In an unbelievable article in the New York Observer, former National Security Agency analyst and military counterintelligence officer John Schindler describes in detail the long purge that has taken place in our foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Anyone who took the threat of Islamic terror seriously was quietly transferred, or urged to retire. Listen to this absolutely damning quote:

It’s hardly a big secret that President Obama from the moment he arrived at the White House put the kibosh on any discussion of radical Islam as a security problem, even in classified channels. In 2009, the administration banned politically loaded words like “jihad” even in classified Intelligence Community assessments discussing terrorism – a message that was received loud and clear in the counterterrorism community. Missing the next 9/11 could be survived, career-wise, while accusations of Islamophobia would not be with Barack Obama in the White House.

That is absolutely unbelievable to read. These are the things that will come out in a book someday. Of course, by then, the damage is already done. I wonder if that’s why Brennan was so candid in his testimony before the Congressional committee. Maybe even he is getting fed up with this strategy.

The FBI is completely overwhelmed. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know that their leadership has been purged of anyone who is too aggressive in their investigations of Islamic terror. And it’s not like this is really their fault, exactly. Mateen was an American citizen with a clean criminal record, after all, and we still have this thing called the Constitution which way too many people are ready to throw into the wood chipper. It’s not like they can just keep a guy under 24 hour surveillance in perpetuity. He can sit there and stew for decades before he decides to go off. That being said… they still dropped the ball.

Additionally, the FBI seems like it is still going by the same playbook. They still are looking for who Matten talked too, where he went, who he emailed, whether he started dressing in robes, etc. Absent any of those things, they decide that he’s not a threat. Except he still is, and he doesn’t need to do that kind of stuff. And sure, maybe him being a closet homosexual had something to do with it. But I refuse to believe that a guy who was jumping up and down for joy when the planes hit the towers on 9/11 just used Islam as an excuse to garner more publicity for his shooting. This is someone who has clearly been motivated by a hatred for the west for a long time.

I think the entire way of thinking about this is outdated. When we started fighting the GWOT, we realized we were fighting a different kind of war. Now, we are in yet another kind of war. This is a war of ideology. The soldiers don’t need a land mass, or a base, or even comrades. All they need is the internet connection to get all worked up from good old old Anwar al-Alwlaki, who will seemingly never go away. (Also a U.S citizen, recall.) And once they are good and indoctrinated, they can go out and murderer in the name of Allah, and take as many infidels with them as possible. We are still thinking in terms of Nation-states. They don’t NEED a nation-state anymore. The ideology IS the nation-state. Seemingly, this realization has dawned on no one.

https://twitter.com/BKactual/status/743499337586581504

Take the fight against ISIS. (Stop trying to make ISIL happen, Barry… It’s not happening.) Even if we were to commit fully at this point to eradicating them, would it matter? Say we go all Fallujah, and unleash Operation Phantom Fury part 17 in spades against ISIS-held Mosul. In other words, we bring in the ground troops, the war planes, the drones, and turn the place into a parking lot and destroy everything in sight. The end result would be almost meaningless. As Brennan said, this has already moved on from Iraq, and spread into Africa, Chechnya, and a host of other spots. It would be an endless game of terrorist whack-a-mole. The ideology is where the fight is. And that ideology will continue to survive and thrive.

In conclusion, I am in despair. We are losing the long war. We have an incompetent administration that is being advised by incompetent homeland security, while fighting a series of small wars around the world run by incompetent generals. It’s time for a change. I am tired of listening to all of these REAL CONSERVATIVES tell me that it is in America’s best interest to send our sons and daughters to go fight and die in far off foreign lands, meddling in some alien culture’s affairs, while that culture’s own citizens refuse to fight for themselves. Equally, I am tired of people convincing me that Islam doesn’t have a problem when they start attacking people for listening to the wrong music and trying to kill them for drawing the wrong picture. A pox on all of their houses. It is far past time to bring our people home and let the citizens of those countries figure it out for themselves.

Yeah, I know. I’m an alarmist. “There goes BK again on another one of his rants.” Believe me, I hear it every day at work. Inspired by my comrades at Sofrep Radio, I even tried a podcast for the first time, which you can listen to here if you like. I talked for 23 minutes straight into my iPhone with no notes or reading material of any kind. Lemme know what you think.

And if you think I’m crazy, let me ask you this: After 15 years, what have we accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The answer? Not a goddamned thing. @BKactual

 

is a retired USAF PJ. Currently frantically checking the mailbox to see if there is any news regarding his Secret Service Application.

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