Obama apparently sincerely believed that there was no
intrinsic connection between Islamism and terror; or, if
there was, Islamic radicalism was no more dangerous than
right-wing or supposedly Christian-inspired terror. Or if
Islamic radicalism did arise, it might be mitigated by
multicultural sympathy and outreach, mostly by
contextualizing the violence as an inevitable result of
prior Western culpability.
Precisely because the Bush-Cheney protocols had thwarted
over 40 post-9/11 Islamist plots, Senator Obama had the
latitude, in 2008, to campaign for the presidency on the
premise that these measures were both unlawful and
superfluous. After he became president and learned of
their utility — and assumed the political responsibility
for the consequences of abandoning his effective
anti-terrorism inheritance — Obama squared the circle of
embracing or expanding all the elements of the war against
terror by politically correct euphemism.
The result has been that ever since 2009, various members
of the administration collective have sought, each
according to his station, to bring us into the network of
not associating Islamism with terror. And the Borg have
certainly been diverse, as all sorts of political
appointees, opportunists, and career officers plugged
themselves into the hive. Obama may have killed ten times
as many suspected Muslim terrorists by drone as did Bush,
but we were to assume that the fact that there were no
Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist victims of Hellfire
missiles was irrelevant.
Shortly after assuming office as the head of Homeland
Security, Janet Napolitano associated the prior “war on
terror” with a “politics of fear”: “In my speech, although
I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to
‘man-caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but
it demonstrates that we want to move away from the
politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all
risks that can occur.” Again, one wishes to ask her how
many Christians have been targeted by Obama-administration
Predator drones.
Various members of the Defense Department soon were
plugged into the new narrative of “this administration”
and, as good automatons, were eager to spread the Borg
directives. A memo sent by the Defense Department’s
security office to Pentagon staff members read, “This
administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’
or ‘Global War on Terror.’ Please use ‘Overseas
Contingency Operation.’”
After the Fort Hood shootings, the Defense Department
characterized the murders as “workplace violence,” despite
the known fact that Major Hasan had been interviewed by
the FBI because of his correspondence with the radical
imam Anwar
al-Awlaki, and even though he yelled “Allahu
Akbar!” as he killed twelve soldiers
and one civilian and wounded more than 30 others. The
military was absorbed into the non-Islamic groupthink to
such a degree that Army Chief of Staff George Casey
editorialized of the mass murder of his soldiers: “Our
diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a
strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our
diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
Dismantling the “diversity program” would be worse than
the slaughter at Fort Hood? These days our martyrs are to
die not on the altar of freedom, but on the altar of
diversity?
The hive thinking quickly spread throughout the Obama
administration’s intelligence apparat, as even those who
once worked for George W. Bush and, in fact, had been
deeply embedded in the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism efforts
were drawn into the Borg — quite willingly and for
careerist reasons. Despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s long
history of Islamist-inspired violence, and its
decades-long anti-American efforts, James Clapper,
director of national intelligence (who had worked for the
Bush administration and defended its launching the Iraq
War by claiming that Saddam Hussein had sent his WMD
stockpiles to Syria on the eve of the American invasion),
offered an absurd illustration of hive thinking: “The term
‘Muslim Brotherhood’ is an umbrella term for a variety of
movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous
group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and
has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”
John Brennan — who, like Clapper, in his pre-Borg
days both worked in the Bush administration and was
criticized for his anti-Islamic-terrorism zealotry
(among other things, for supposedly promoting enhanced
interrogations in Guantanamo of the
now-politically-incorrect category of “enemy
combatants”) — also was rewired when he became Obama’s
counter-terrorism advisor. Soon he duly opined of the
now-taboo idea of jihadism, “Jihad is holy struggle, a
legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or
one’s community.” Apparently the Tsarnaevs got a bit out
of hand as they were purifying themselves in their holy
struggle on the streets of Boston.
Sometimes the Borg drew in those well outside the
military, intelligence, and national-security communities.
According to NASA Administrator Charles
Bolden, when President Obama set out the “foremost”
task of NASA, it had nothing to do with space exploration.
Rather, the president “wanted me to find a way to reach
out to the Muslim world and engage much more with
dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about
their historic contribution to science . . . and math and
engineering.” I think the Borg logic here is something
like the following: Thanks to the legacy of Averroes,
America can still get to Mars — and thanks to our
recognition of that debt, the Tsarnaevs and Hasans of the
world will “feel good” and are going to celebrate
diversity rather than kill lots of innocent people.
These examples of the Borg could be vastly expanded, from
Homeland Security’s warning of future violence not from
Muslim males but rather from “right-wing extremism” —
emanating from returning war veterans and anti-abortion
activists — to the mandatory substitution of “militant
extremism” and “violent extremism” for “Islamic
extremism.”
When so many in government have been recircuited into the
hive, it is no surprise that the FBI in the field has
dropped its proper focus on militant Islam, or that the
thug Vladimir Putin proved more helpful than did our own
FBI and CIA directors in the Tsarnaev case. After all, the
FBI had interviewed, but not detained, a number of men who
later proved to be Islamic terrorists, such as the
Tsarnaevs, Nidal Hasan, Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulhakim
Mujahid Muhammad, and David Coleman Headley. One wonders
what common complaint or malady these subjects shared —
anti-abortion zealotry, tax resistance, homophobia, secret
tea-party sympathies, several tours in Anbar Province,
nativist anger at illegal immigrants, or simple head
injuries?
What will break up the Borg? Tragically, it may take
another Boston-style bombing to send enough rogue voltage
through the system to explode the circuitry and free the
drones from the hive.
