ISIS terrorists released a video Tuesday that claims to show the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff. In the video titled “A second message to America,’’ Sotloff, 31, of Florida can be seen kneeling in orange garb in front of a black-cloaked executioner following news footage of President Obama talking tough about the terror group. Sotloff says into the camera that he is “paying the price’’ for US intervention in Syria. —
Now read this story:
Without offering specifics on any threats or suggestions on how to confront them, the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees urged the White House to work to prevent the Islamic State extremists from launching attacks on US soil. The bipartisan pair shared a dire warning against the IS group, which now has control of vast swathes of Syria and Iraq, has killed civilians from that region and beheaded American journalist James Foley. “This is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the upper house intelligence panel. “And they’ll kill with abandon.” In a separate TV interview, Mike Rogers, leader of the House Intelligence Committee warned the leaders of the Islamic State, sometimes also called ISIL or ISIS, are looking for a spectacular attack that would help them raise money and recruit more fighters. “ISIL would like to have a Western-style attack to continue this notion that they are the leading jihadist group in the world,” said Republican Mr Rogers.
And now recall that Sen. Feinstein (“I have a deep belief that these weapons are antithetical to our values”) is one of the foremost proponents of the disarming of the American people — “gun control” — in Congress. The Left would rather see you die than have the ability to defend yourself. They fear the power of the citizenry more than they fear America’s enemies. What does that tell you about who they are? For how is the threat posed to America by ISIS anything other than a validation of the Second Amendment and your right to keep and bear arms? With the southern border wide open, and the PC Police refusing to answer any questions about who and what is flooding into our country, the necessity of self-defense is no longer merely theoretical. Intelligence sources confirm that ISIS is seeking a Mumbai-style assault on a European or American city, where the first line of defense would be neither the cops — trained to catch crooks, not repel invasions — or the army but… you. Admiral Yamamoto may not in fact have said that a Japanese invasion of the U.S. was impossible because “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass,” but the gist certainly used to be right. Is it anymore?
We submit!
Today, the Narrative explains that guns are to be presumed evil, and that a gun owner’s intentions must always be suspect lest another school shooting occur. But what happens to the innocent when the population is disarmed — even those who could and would fight back had they had weapons? Recall that, under the U.S. Code, every able-bodied man between the ages of17 and 45 is automatically a member of the “unorganized militia.” We are all expected to fight. In the second of my “Devlin” novels, Early Warning, I offered a fictional take on how such an attack could affect midtown Manhattan:
The killers had gone to school on Mumbai, that was much was clear. The attack on Times Square had been well-coordinated, the timing of the subway explosion perfect, the sealing of at least the Holland Tunnel a masterstroke. In fact, Devlin was counting on their professionalism. Professionals were many things, but one thing above all was that they were predictable. Training had instilled in them discipline and with discipline came adherence to the rules — not arbitrary rules but rules that worked, rules that were proven to keep your ass alive in the toughest spots. Professionals could be dealt with, as he had dealt with Milverton in Paris and London; you might win or lose in direct hand-to-hand combat, but you knew the rules of the game. Amateurs, however, were a different story. Most of them could be picked off rather easily, since their true-believer rage caused them to blunder time and again as they hoped to make up for in rage and anger what they lacked in basic tradecraft. Amateurs were like the guy who drove all the way across the country, took the Metro to the Pentagon and opened fire at the guards at the civilian entrance; he managed to wound two before they cut him down and killed him. He’d made his point, but for what? He should have just shot himself back home in California and saved time.
The question is: how professional is ISIS? On the basis of past evidence of Arab military prowess, probably not very. A couple of platoons of Marines tend to send the “elite” Muslim units fleeing into the desert, shedding weapons and uniforms. Still, why take chances? There’s a reason gun sales are booming in this country, and it’s about time the Left understood it before they, too, go under the knife, with no lawyers or politicians to help them.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member