Jennifer Epstein, a reporter for Bloomberg and clearly the very model of a modern Leftist journalist, asked Hillary Clinton today:
Are you concerned that this weekend’s attacks or potential incidents in the coming weeks might be an attempt by ISIS or ISIS sympathizers, or really any other group, maybe the Russians, to influence the presidential race in some way, and presumably try to drive votes to Donald Trump?
In response, the former secretary of State for a president who has given billions to the Islamic Republic of Iran — a country which ordered its people to chant “Death to America” every Friday in their mosques — accused Trump of treason.
She said Trump was being used as a “recruiting sergeant for terrorists,” and that “the kinds of rhetoric and language that Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.”
Giving “aid and comfort” to the enemy is not a simple colloquialism. The phrase is part of the legal definition of treason.
Trump was a traitor, in Clinton’s view, because:
[W]e know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they are looking to make this into a war against Islam, rather than a war against jihadists, violent terrorists, people who number maybe in the maybe tens of thousands, not the tens of millions, they want to use that to recruit more fighters to their cause, by turning it into a religious conflict. That’s why I’ve been very clear. We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going go after an entire religion and give ISIS exactly what it’s wanting in order for them to enhance their position.
How she proposed to distinguish the “bad guys” from the larger population of Muslims, Clinton didn’t say.
Nor did Clinton mention that hardly any Muslim organizations or authorities around the world have declared that someone who believes in the Islam of ISIS or al-Qaeda is not welcome in their mosques and Islamic schools.
“We’re going after the bad guys,” she said, on the same day the following was revealed:
[The Obama administration] mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders.
…
Mistakenly awarding citizenship to someone ordered deported can have serious consequences because U.S. citizens can typically apply for and receive security clearances or take security-sensitive jobs.
Hardly a promising indication of how effectively the Obama administration has been “going after the bad guys.”
Clinton likewise did not address the point of Trump’s proposed temporary moratorium on immigration from countries with a high incidence of jihad terror. Trump has not looked to demonize all Muslims or Islam as a whole, or to blame all Muslims for the crime of a few. In reality, Trump’s proposal is a recognition that there is no other means of preventing jihadis from entering the U.S. among peaceful refugees. There is no way to distinguish one from the other.
Trump’s proposal is a difficult but necessary measure. Clinton, on the other hand, has determined that seeing Americans killed in jihad attacks is preferable to stalling potential Muslim migrants.
Clinton really does believe that global jihad will be weakened if the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the motivating ideology behind jihad terror. She really does believe that jihad will be strengthened if we do. Her claim — that the Islamic State recruits on the basis of alleged “anti-Muslim rhetoric” from Western politicians — is based on the fact that the Islamic State and al-Qaeda often recruit on the basis of grievance narratives against the West.
But Clinton ignores that the Islamic State’s promotional material is filled, issue after issue, with explanations of the Qur’an and Islam that make it clear this isn’t ultimately a conflict about those grievances. The Islamic State is going out of its way to clear this up, as per the following passage from the most recent issue of Dabiq, their online magazine:
Even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.
No doubt they will continue to hate Hillary Clinton for not embracing Islam, no matter how much she employs comforting euphemisms rather than dealing honestly with the jihad ideology.
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