by Sam Rolley
As the threat of a Mideast Islamic caliphate controlled by the brutal militants at the helm of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerging by 2015 becomes plausible, the power of terrorists to export religiously motivated attacks to the West is growing. Meanwhile, the U.S. is embracing increasingly lax border-control standards. These two things are not unrelated.
American writer and blogger Tom Rogan, in a column for The Telegraph this week, envisions what the Mideast may look like in a year if the ISIS threat continues unabated:
For Isis, 2015 is … a dream come true. Using their Caliphate as a vehicle to export terrorism, they’ve launched two major attacks on the West. In November 2014, French citizens bombed a restaurant and a bus in Paris. In a simultaneous January 2015 attack, British citizens blew up two transatlantic passenger planes. Six hundred died. This airline attack has taken more than innocent lives. It has frayed EU-US diplomacy. America now requires EU passport holders who’ve traveled to any of 10 countries (including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey) to attain a visa for travel to the United States. Combined with fears over flight safety, the airlines have lost billions in revenues. Intelligence services are struggling to identify Isis terrorists who are returning home with a smile and the knowhow of a bomb-maker. Benefiting from Snowden’s leaks, Isis has dramatically reduced its use of the internet and cell phones. More attacks are expected.
While Rogan leaves out the prospect of an attack on the U.S. mainland so soon, it’s certainly not out of the question.
Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell discussed ISIS Monday on CBS’s “This Morning,” noting that an attack on the U.S. is a clear goal for the terror group.
“One [of ISIS’s goals] is to set up that caliphate and, it’s not just in Iraq and in Syria,” he said, contending that the caliphate would likely eventually include all areas of The Levant (or greater Syria), which includes modern Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.
“Their second goal then is to use that as a safe haven to attack the United States,” Morell added.
Rogan is correct to assume that a growing ISIS threat and terror attacks by radicalized inhabitants of other Western countries would lead U.S. officials to crack down on travel into the Nation from areas likely to harbor terror sympathizers.
But the political capital that President Barack Obama and Democrats have put into allowing illegal immigration from the Nation’s southern border creates a perfect entry point to the U.S. for Islamic terrorists. As Texas Governor Rick Perry noted on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday, it isn’t just Mexicans flowing into the U.S. from the south.
“We have record high numbers of other than Mexicans being apprehended at the border. These are people that are coming from states like Syria that have substantial connections back to terrorist regimes and terrorist operations. So we’re seeing record, historic high numbers of these individuals being apprehended,” Perry said.
Currently, Obama’s “dream”for the children of illegal immigrants to the U.S. is creating a nightmare for officials in charge of U.S. border security. According to reports, Border Patrol agents are spending more time handling paperwork and unaccompanied minors dumped at the border than they are doing actual patrols.
Back in 2009, an al-Qaida recruitment video surfaced, which proves that Obama isn’t the only dreamer when it comes to bringing in people from the Nation’s southern border. Though, while Obama’s policy is bringing thousands of unattended illegal immigrant children to the Nation, Kuwaiti dissident terror recruiter Abdullah al-Nafisi said he requires only one illegal immigrant for his plan to work.
“Four pounds of anthrax — in a suitcase this big — carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there,” the recruiter said. “What a horrifying idea; 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration.”
Even more disturbing is that U.S. counterterror officials have long noted Mexican cartels’ willingness to work with Islamic extremists — not for ideological but economic ends.
And if you think something akin to al-Nafisi’s smuggling mission would be impossible, consider for a moment that, according to some estimates, the Sinola Mexican drug cartel moves an average of one kilo of cocaine across the Nation’s border every 10 minutes.
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