-Caveat Lector-
NewsMax.com How Many American Elite Does It Take to Screw In a
Lightbulb?
Diane Alden
Oct. 18, 2001
Even while courage and American can-do are being exhibited and
celebrated
hither and yon among the common folk, America's evil, banal and
stupid
other self is still running true to form.
In Washington, the bureaucrats,
academe, politicos, celebrities, the media, and ninnies of various
kinds --
our elite -- are once more showing us that America's "brightest and
best" have a very difficult time learning life's lessons.
We don't know our friends from our enemies. We marginalize Israel and
turn a
blind eye to a despotic ruling family in Saudi Arabia, which gives or
launders money to the Taliban.
When the royal house of Saudi crumbles, so
will our interests there. The result will be a nearly catastrophic
situation
in which it will be war over oil as we fight the warriors of Islam here and
abroad. It is no small deal that bin Laden and his minions are serious about
American presence near the holy places of Mecca and Medina being one of the
"root causes" of their hatred for the U.S.
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh tells us in a recent article in The
New Yorker: "The American intelligence officials have been particularly angered by the
refusal of the Saudis to help the F.B.I. and the C
.I.A. run 'traces' -- that is, name checks and other background information -- on the
nineteen men, more than half of them believed to be from
Saudi Arabia, who took part in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon."
"They knew that once we started asking for a few traces the list
would grow," one former official said. "It's better to shut it down right
away."
Hersh points out that " thousands of disaffected Saudis have joined fundamentalist
groups throughout the Middle East. Other officials said that
there is a growing worry inside the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that the actual
identities of many of those involved in the attacks may not be known
definitively for months, if ever. Last week, a senior intelligence official
confirmed the lack of Saudi cooperation and told me, angrily, that the
Saudis 'have only one constant -- and it's keeping themselves in power.' "
Meanwhile, investigative journalist Paul Sperry reports that it's business as
usual at America's small private airports. Flying is again allowed in and
around our major cities.
What is really truly weird is that as soon as the
ban against flying out of private airports was lifted, 14 Syrians were
allowed into the United States to take flying lessons. Syria, by the way, is
listed as one of those nations that harbors terrorists.
But we are giving
their sons flying lessons. Why is that? Is it merely to make a buck? Or are
we being a sympathetic ally in some phantom coalition we wish we had with
Syria.
Or is it because we are incompetent boobs who keep doing dumb things because no one is
talking to anyone else and no one is really in charge? We
are telling everyone we are a free nation for foreign residents, but on the
other hand we seek to inflict heavy penalties on our legal citizens. We do
that through hundreds of gun control laws even as we keep the door ajar for
the odd terrorist who might slip in.
So you thought now that we have Homeland Defense czar Tom Ridge we have
nothing more to worry about? Try this on for size.
According to the
Washington Times, "Floyd Horn, administrator of the Agriculture
Research Service, warned the food industry and farmers to watch for unusual
plant and animal diseases because terrorists might resort to biological
weapons that can infect and destroy them. "There are diseases that can wipe
out our herds and crops," he said.
How might those be spread? Could a number
of pilots from Middle Eastern countries trained and HERE in the U.S. be the
corn crop bombers, the dust off in the Central Valley, the wheat rot in
Kansas, the cow deaths in Colorado?
The government asks us to remain calm
and go about our daily lives as usual. How can we do that when that same
government can't do commonsense preventive measures -- like not allowing
Middle Eastern men from countries that are acknowledged homes to terrorists to take
flying lessons in the U.S.?
One would think that the brain trust in D.C. would order a little more vigilance at
the gates of the U.S., considering we are in a sorta kinda war?
Think again. For every detainee that John Ashcroft talks about putting in federal
detention, we are letting twice and three times that many into
the U.S. right at this very moment.
Did you know that since Sept. 11
there has been no change in our visa program and that the same laws still
apply?
Did you know that last year around 80,000 people came into the U.S. from Syria, Egypt,
Iraq, Algeria, Libya and even Afghanistan?
Did you know that up to 250,000 a year can get into and out of the United States from
the
Middle East?
As Martin Gross states in his Washington Times piece, "The most generous visa is
granted to citizens of Saudi Arabia, ostensibly our friend.
It is for 'Multiple Use,' and valid for two years. It enables them to travel
anywhere in the United States, even back and forth to Saudi Arabia."
Did you know that most of the hijack terrorists held Saudi passports?
Now we know that at least 14 Syrians are in a flight school somewhere in Middle
America right at this very moment. The question becomes if we are in a
crisis situation and serious about protecting Americans from attack from
abroad, on our soil, using our facilities, shouldn't preventive measures be
taken?
Since the current attacks on the U.S. are coming from people of Middle Eastern
background, wouldn't prudence require a commonsense move to halt
easy-access visas until such time as the "war" against terrorism is at the
very least slowed?
In other words, we can no longer afford unlimited entry into a country at war until
the system is cleaned up.
The fact is that embassies and consulates abroad are supposedly understaffed and
undertrained and not equipped to deal with visas and background checks that number in
the hundreds of thousands. The commonsense
thing would be to limit visa grants to manageable numbers, especially visas
from countries where acts of terrorism are routine and which are known
hideouts for international criminals.
But when did common sense and prudence stop a government from shooting
itself and us in the foot?
Meanwhile, a 73-year-old grandmother is refused boarding on a flight out of
O'Hare for possession of knitting needles. At the same time American airline
pilots who are entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars of potential
flying bombs are not trusted to carry a firearm in the cockpit.
While Tom
Daschle tables the energy bill because it will open up the ANWR to oil
drilling and we get yet another condescending lecture on how to be kind to
Muslims -- America is not yet serious about fighting terrorism on any front.
America hasn't quite figured it out yet -- perhaps because we have always
thought we were invulnerable, like the Titanic, so that "not even God could
sink it."
But in fact we are an open society, a vulnerable society, which
offers freedom and openness to those who have neither earned it by acquiring
citizenship or entry to it as a privilege to be used in a non-lethal way.
We don't face the fact that terrorists find homes here because they know they would be
strung up in their own countries, countries which have less
than shining human rights records.
We have housed leaders of Hamas at
institutions like the University of South Florida, where in October of 1995 a
former member of the university's academic staff, Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, was named
leader of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization.
Then there was the
case of Musa Abu Marzuq, who was arrested at Kennedy Airport in July 1995 on
charges of murder and attempted murder for Hamas. At the time of his arrest,
Abu Marzuq -- a permanent resident of the United States for five years -- headed
a Washington-area think tank called the United Association for Studies and
Research.
According to the Middle Eastern Forum online, "From their places of exile in
the West, the leadership of fundamentalist Islamic movements maintains daily
contact with followers in the Middle East via facsimile transmissions,
telephone conversations, and frequent visits of emissaries of the movement
from their home countries. During the intifada, the Hamas movement's
communiqués, for example, were jointly produced by Hamas activists in Gaza,
who drafted the materials and then faxed them to Ahmad Bin Yusuf, a Hamas
ideologue resident in Virginia, for his editing and approval."
Some experts believe Middle Eastern terrorists are increasingly dependent on
their U.S. allies. Hamas, for example, raises about one-third of its $30
million annual budget in this country and Europe, University of Illinois
terrorism experts say.
Terrorists have picked up the ways of the West and the Great Satan they deplore. They
take on the structure of business corporations by locating them in countries they
hate, then operate against the "moderate" Arab states
like Egypt, Israel, and now the United States, which has housed them.
They have been allowed to return to the United States
and remain at large safely ensconced in the liberties they would deny to
others if they could. They use charitable organizations as fronts and they
cry bigotry and prejudice when one of theirs is singled out for
investigation.
Which leads me to the Immigration Act of 1965. Since that time people from
the Third World have had a better shot at getting into the United States
than at any previous time. That Act must be reformed.
We are now home to some
terrorist leaders who may have been citizens for decades. If that is the
case, perhaps naturalizing citizens needs to be on condition
citizenship is not abused through acts of terrorism or assisting terrorism here
or abroad.
We should not be granting permanent residency to terrorists. Even those terrorists who
have done time in Israeli prisons or prisons in ANY country
in the world for terrorism. That may separate the "freedom fighter" from
the bad terrorist, but so be it.
We should not be letting people into the country on any kind of visa unless
they are thoroughly checked out, no matter how long it takes. We are fools to
let these monsters come and go using us as a staging area for their terror
around the world
Deny citizenship in this country that allows terrorist leaders to hold a Western
passport.
The list of cases of operatives of Islamic fundamentalism or groups and rogue
nation-states in the Middle East is alarming. Many have legally gained
U.S. citizenship or acquired visas because our system is such a mess.
In fact,
some people who were U.S. citizens have done time in Israeli prisons for
terrorism, as in the case of Mohammad Salah of Bridgeview, Ill.
According to a
story in the Oct. 31, 2000, Washington Post, "Salah, a U.S.
citizen ... denied any links to violence. But American officials describe him
as a 'high-level operative' for Hamas who financed armed attacks on
Israelis. He served five years in an Israeli prison for alleged terrorist
activities before returning last November to Chicago, where he had first
moved from the Middle East in 1970 ... (F]BI says Salah also made several
trips to the West Bank and Gaza to help a top Hamas leader named Mousa
Mohammed Abu Marzook, a longtime Fairfax County resident who was deported to
Jordan in 1996. In hundreds of pages of public documents, the FBI has
outlined a complex series of covert real estate deals it says were designed
to launder $820,000 from a Saudi company to Hamas and where, according to
Israeli officials, he taught Palestinian students how to make car bombs."
Last year while campaigning, George W. Bush made inroads into the Muslim
community. He told the leadership and others in that community that one of
the things he would do if he were president would be to end the use of secret
evidence in deportation hearings.
But that stymies the FBI and federal agencies
when they try and do their jobs. Deportation hearings are about people who
do not have citizenship in the U.S. While they have rights as people and as
human beings, they DO NOT have certain rights as citizens. If we don't get
that situation straightened out ASAP, the "war" in Afghanistan will mean
little but another American foreign adventure.
America seems to have a difficult time when it involves common sense. Out of
the hundreds of think tanks, policy groups, roundtables, congressional
oversight committees, caucuses, talking heads, G-7 and G-8 meetings, weekends
for the powers that be, coffee klatches and wine parties, NOTHING concrete or
even vaguely smacking of common sense emerges. This is the same group of
power brokers that wants us to trust it now.
I would gamble there is more common sense in the locals at the City Cafe
down the street from my house than in all the marble halls of D.C., the media
empires, and the puffery of the high and the mighty. I am waiting for the
powers that be to prove me wrong, but I am not holding my breath.
I would suspect the firemen who died in the WTC horror and the young men of
Flight 93 on an average day had more sense than an entire roomful of our
"brightest and best." The reason is that they did what they had to do and
there was no study or policy debate to find out what that was -- they just
naturally did the RIGHT THING.
Please check out www.aldenchronicles.com. I suggest reading "About What Is Hidden," an
American expatriate's experiences in a Muslim country. You can write to me at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
***
Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political
science and economics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Times
as well as NewsMax.com, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many
other online publications. She also does radio commentaries for Steve
Myers' show on Liberty Works Monday and Friday mornings, and can be
heard regularly on Mike Fleming, WREC in Memphis.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
War on Terrorism
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