Apropos of the #BostonBombers, CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted this weekend: Big q is why FBI didnt keep an eye on/talk to Tamerlan Tsarnaev after he returned from Chechnya last year. So far from FBI: crickets.
Tapper’s right. The FBI is not looking particularly good as far as their surveillance of murderous Caucasian Islamists on our soil is concerned. And Tamerlan, evidently , left quite a trail, from domestic violence to reportedly attacking an imam for holding up MLK as someone to emulate. Not exactly subtle. They were even warned about Tamerlan by the Russians apparently.
The Feds must have been pretty clueless to ignore all this.
Probably. But I offer in their defense one of the hoariest of cliches: The fish rots from the top.
The Obama administration and most of those working for it have taken Islamic terrorism about as seriously as I am taking the Memphis Grizzlies/L.A. Clippers game currently on my TV — in other words, at best mildly interested. Not being a fan of either team, I could watch — I could switch to something else.
And when Islamic terrorism does rear its head, as in Benghazi, the administration evinces something worse than disinterest — dishonesty, lies, coverup and prevarication (sometimes aided by Tapper’s CNN cohort Candy Crowley).
And they don’t stop. They haven’t offered anything yet even remotely resembling a transparent account of the Libyan events or of their motivation. The secretary of State has told us it’s not even important. (How does that look in the light of Boston?)
So why would we expect the nation’s police department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation — to take these matters with the requisite seriousness? The message they are getting from the top is …meh. Until something happens, Islamic terrorism is way down this administration’s list of priorities. And when it happens, the “t-word” is only mentioned under the most extreme duress (or possible political fallout). And the word “Islam” is abjured even when someone yells “Allahu Akbar!” while shooting everyone in the room.
Do you think the FBI agent on the street doesn’t notice? Ah, let this Tamerlan guy go argue with his imam. It’s lunch time. Legal Sea Foods, anyone?
Well, to employ another cliche that has overtones of its own, the chicken has come home to roost.We are going to have to take these matters seriously from now on because what happened in Boston is arguably scarier than September 11, 2001, not in its headcount, obviously, but in its implications.
The attack on the World Trade Center may have been a one-off. Hijacking 747s is not easy to do, less so now. But blowing up folks at an event, or even a non-event like an average day at an average shopping mall, is much simpler and vastly more difficult to defend in a country the size of the USA. Even two or three incidents would change the character of our daily lives forever and lay waste to our already precarious economy, probably take the world economy along with it.
Is this going to happen? That depends on what’s hiding out there in our fair land. Who knows how many Tamerlans and Dzhokhars lurk in the cities and suburbs of our country, waiting to explode? Not the FBI, evidently. And I doubt anybody else.
Meanwhile, we have the worst possible president to deal with the situation. And even after an event as heinous as Boston, he is supported by a media desperate to preserve his narrative at all costs. It’s already started. On Saturday the Boston Globe published an article titled — I kid you not — “Islam might have a secondary role in Boston attacks.” (Don’t look for what might have the primary role. You won’t find it.) That stupefying essay is a harbinger of what’s to come as soon as the atmosphere dies down, perhaps as soon as next week.
Keep the truth alive. And your eyes open. Your life — or that of someone you love — may depend on it.
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