A Welcome Recognition of the Islamist Threat from a ‘Mainstream’ Source

After the 9/11 Islamist attacks, President GW Bush and the Congress created The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 Commission. It’s final report was issued on July 22, 2004 (PDF Version). It’s mandate, according to the preface, was to answer the question “How did the happen, and how can we avoid such tragedy again?” The report “provides a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. It also includes recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.”

The 2004 report was widely anticipated, publicized, and debated, and most of its practical recommendations have been wholly or partially implemented, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). What has not gotten much coverage is a new BPC report authored by the original 9/11 Commission members.

John Farmer Jr summarizes the new study in a guest column published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on September 11, 2017. Regarding the BPC report, “Defeating Terrorists, Not Terrorism: An Assessment of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy From 9/11 to ISIS,” Farmer observes that although . . .

the capacity of terrorist organizations to conduct far-flung, sophisticated operations like the 9/11 attacks has been disrupted if not totally degraded, [the BPC report observes that] "the threat of terrorism has metastasized. Last year, terrorists launched five times as many attacks as in 2001 . . . For each threat defused, another soon takes its place; for each terrorist group disrupted, another soon arises; for each terrorist killed, more eager recruits appear."

The BPC reports that “It is impossible to conclude that the enemy has been defeated,” and attempts to answer the question, “Why?” Hearteningly, the BPC report reads like a breath of fresh air—and truth. As Farmer writes in these excerpts:

Our successes have been significant, therefore, but largely tactical.  "For all of its battlefield and intelligence successes," the BPC Report notes, "the United States has demonstrated little ability to degrade support for the ideology underlying jihadist terrorism."

That ideology rejects the idea of a nation state as a western creation foisted upon Islam by colonial powers. It advocates a world as a unified caliphate under a single Islamist banner, and rejects utterly the notion of the separation of church and state, believing that "the Koran is our constitution" and that religious law should inform all aspects of daily life. It offers the disaffected a simple answer to every grievance, a simple solution to the world's complexities: violent jihad.

Its allure has proven extremely powerful as Islamic State has emerged from al-Qaeda.

Just as only Muslims can be effective in countering the Islamist version of Islam, only America and the west can be effective in countering the Islamist totalitarian rejection of our freedoms and way of life.

As a culture -- not just as a government -- we must expose the Islamist sloganeering of "Democracy hypocrisy! Democracy go to hell! Freedom go to hell!" for the prelude to tyranny that it represents. [My emphasis]

If this analysis sounds familiar, it’s because is mirrors what some voices have been saying since 9/11. And Elan Journo, co-author of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism: From George W. Bush to Barack Obama and Beyond, wrote in 2016:

The problem goes way beyond ignorance. Ignorance is where everyone starts out. But the jihadists have never made their cause secret. Our enemy is defined, not primarily by their use of terrorist means, but by their ideological ends. They fight to create a society wherein Islamic religious law, or sharia, dominates every last detail of every individual’s life, a cause inspired and funded by patrons such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and above all, Iran. In our book, we call this political-ideological movement Islamic totalitarianism. [My emphasis]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali also comes to mind with her book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, in which she calls on Muslims “to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first.” Is their message finally breaking through to the “mainstream?”

What’s particularly noteworthy about the report Farmer summarizes is that the BPC group that authored it was co-chaired by Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, who headed the original 9/11 Commission Report. John Farmer Jr. himself has impressive credentials. He was New Jersey's attorney general on Sept. 11, 2001, a former senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, and is currently a university professor and special counsel to the president of Rutgers University. Farmer also contributed to this latest report. While I have not read the entire BPC report, I think that, given Farmer’s credentials and ties to the Commission, we can trust that he accurately summarizes the essentials of the report.

We can debate the recommendations of the BPC report. The main value of the report is that it identifies the true nature of the enemy as fundamentally rooted in Islamic text, rather than whitewashing this fact by trivializing the terrorists as “hijackers of a peaceful religion” or some such nonsense. The question is, what effect will the report have on the policies of our political leaders? Unfortunately, the BPC report hasn’t, to my knowledge, gotten much coverage. This is surprising, given the wide attention given to the findings and recommendations of the 2004 9/11 Commission Report. We can only speculate. But perhaps too many people don’t want to go where this report leads, for fear of “offending” rank-and-file Muslims. Just a few weeks after Farmer’s column, there appeared in the Star-Ledger a guest column by Muslim-American Fakhruddin Ahmed titled Trump's unwelcoming message to Muslim Americans like me, in which Ahmad criticized President Trump’s use of the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism” because it “conflate[s] Islam itself with terrorism and offend[s] the world's 1.6 billion Muslims who do not see a link between the two.” If Muslims themselves won’t acknowledge the obvious connection between aspects of their religion and terrorism, how will Muslims ever “be effective in countering the Islamist version of Islam,” as the BPC report urges?

Still, the report has been written and published. Have we reached a cultural and political turning point, where we can toss the “War on Terror” into the dustbin of history and finally acknowledge the much broader scope of the fight? Or will Kean, Hamilton, and Farmer be brushed off as another group of “Islamophobes”, or simply ignored for running afoul of political correctness?

That would be a shame. This report deserves the same wide exposure as the original report. We better hope this report is a cultural wakeup call, because right now the Islamic totalitarians are militarily weak—which is why they rely on terrorism against civilians. The fundamental battle is ideological, as Farmer observes. What will happen if our leaders continue to evade the real nature of the enemy until the Islamists acquire the military capacity, including nuclear weapons, to back up their ideology?

Only time will tell. But Defeating Terrorists, Not Terrorism: An Assessment of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy From 9/11 to ISIS is a hopeful sign. Farmer’s column is titled N.J.'s attorney general on 9/11: How to defeat Islamist terrorism, and is an interesting, worthwhile, and encouraging read.