Denial runs deep

On Thursday a woman in Moore, OK was beheaded by a converted Muslim after he was fired from her company.  The suspect was reportedly yelling religious chants during the episode.   For some reason it didn't become a big story until Friday, whereupon it was explained as, although a little weird, just another episode of "workplace violence" with no 'nexus' to any terrorism.

Today the Drudge Report has a headline regards a nexus to terrorism, but a check of the mainstream news websites shows the story is already starting to fall off the front page.  

Meanwhile several reporters grilled White House press flak Josh Earnest on Friday over his steadfast contention that "Core" AQ has been "decimated". 



The White House is holding on to the thinnest of reeds to make the case, ie, Afghanistan is no longer home to AQ and Bin Laden is dead, so they can't easily hatch international plots.  Aside from the fact Bush had a lot to do with reducing their numbers, it doesn't really matter.  AQ has branched out into affiliates across the greater Islamic world to include individuals like Major Hasan.  The ideology is still being pumped by former number two Zawahiri and several other top leaders and operatives, who are training others to take over.  ISIS is a virtual state.  Continuing to say AQ has been 'decimated' makes our administration almost sound insane. 

Besides, it doesn't take a large personnel infrastructure, command and control, and millions of dollars to pull off attacks in the West that can kill thousands.  Our free society is full of vulnerabilities. 

The denial even extends to this new Khorasan Group, aka AQ, aka "AQ from Iran".   Iran has been helping AQ strategically to use them as leverage with the West over their nuke program as both factions understand that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a game-changer regards Israel and the Western powers.  Meanwhile our embassies in Tripoli and San'a have been abandoned due to unrest despite Obama recently using our actions in Yemen as a benchmark for success.

The sad fact is that despite the money we've spent and lives lost, Islamic radicalism isn't dead.  It's not on the run.  It hasn't been decimated.  It's a religious movement grounded in a harsh interpretation of a holy book that lays our political steps as to how lives are to be led, which is 180 degrees opposite of western values. It is literally a clash of civilizations.  The fight will be long and messy.  We have no choice but to continue or surrender large chunks of the world to this ideology.

But speaking that kind of truth to the electorate really doesn't help garner votes because Americans like their wars short and concise, not long and messy.  And they like their ideological sides, right and left, because the other side contains the evil stupid bastards responsible for the mess their side is having to clean up.  Not much room for understanding when this divide is allowed to remain wide open by political leaders for their own means.  

Back to Moore, Oklahoma.  If people truly wonder about what might turn a troubled young convict into a jihadist, read Morten Storm's book "Agent Storm", the chronicles of a Danish motorcycle thug who after years of trouble with the law converted to Islam and eventually befriended some of radical Islam's top leaders. Like Storm, Jah’Keem Yisrael, aka Alton Nolen of Oklahoma, found religion after years of trouble, perhaps drawn to the rigidity and paternalism of Islam.  He was possibly acting against an 'enemy' (bin Laden considered no Americans as innocent) by attacking his former employer.  Agent Storm, aka "Murad", eventually comes to his senses over the killing of innocents and turncoats to western intelligence to help them infiltrate AQAP and al-Shabaab.

It's a fascinating read (even if embellished some) not only shining light on radical thought but also on the contradictions of a free Western society that allows gay marriage, drugs, booze, rampant sex, scantily clad young women with tattoos and lax morals, which can be every bit as big a recruiter as was George Bush's Iraq war or GITMO.  The problem always goes back to the Muslim Sharia solution to such things, evidence of which keeps coming out on grisly web videos and is the main reason our Nobel Peace Prize President "who ends wars" has started bombing Iraq again and now Syria, even as his minions claim over and over that the enemy has been decimated.