Why Is There No Honest Discourse About Terrorism's Roots?
Written by Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato, December 14, 2007 from The New Media Journal
We hear a lot about the subject of terrorism today. This has been the case for mainstream America – and the world – since the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001. Each night on the news, as if by the networks’ design, there are the obligatory stories about a car bombing or a suicide attack, perhaps a fifteen second shot of the aftermath, a condescending, concerned look from the anchor and then a commercial. “We’ll be right back with another story about Britney Spears’ , right after this!”
That the single biggest threat to our nation has become B-Roll news program filler should disgust each and every one of us. Then, each and every one of us is to blame that it has come to this.
Try to think back to the last time you saw the images of September 11th on television or in the mainstream media newspapers and magazines? Chances are it was either directly after the attacks or during a memorial segment commemorating the anniversary of those attacks.
The truth is that the mainstream media removed the images of September 11th from our sight – the images of death and destruction, the murder of thousands of innocents, the people who chose to leap to their deaths rather than burn alive – because they deemed the images “too disturbing” for us to see.
Try to remember the last time you heard an ingenuous, learned, intelligent discussion about the root causes of Islamist terrorism on a news program or a news issues television show. Most likely it was directly after 9/11. The overwhelming majority of inspection done on the issue today centers on the treatment – or perceived mistreatment – of radical Islamofascists caught on the field of battle or those who were apprehended for being implicated in plots to slaughter innocents both here in the United States and abroad.
Then, of course, we have the pseudo-intellectual network talking heads and anti-war zealots who insist that it is the radical Islamist, caught with AK-47 in hand, who is the victim of the oppression that America has to offer. It couldn’t possibly be that the person pulling the trigger or detonating the suicide vest is to blame. America’s foreign policy “made them do it.”
The fact of the matter is this: The politically correct mainstream media; agenda-driven, sensationalistic, emotionally opportunistic, one-sided and uneducated, has assumed, nay commandeered, the role of arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.
They have crowned themselves “deciders” of what is appropriate for our consumption and what is not. They have come to dictate, in totalitarian fashion, the parameters of any public conversation with regard to the most important issue of the day, the survival of our nation.
Proof of this can be found in the absence of any pictures or footage of the 9/11 attacks on news broadcasts. It can be found in their grotesque and politically correct reluctance to even speak the words “Islam” and “terrorism” in the same sentence.
It can be found in their refusal to acknowledge that almost 100% of the legitimately defined terrorist acts are perpetrated at the hands of Wahhabist terrorists – Islamist radicals, Islamist fundamentalists – dedicated to the demise of Western Civilization and the establishment of a global Caliphate.
It can be found in the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans and Westerners can’t even explain the difference between the Sunni and Shi’ite sects of Islam.
In his 2003 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, The Institute of World Politics’ Dr. Michael Waller stated:
“The testimony of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before this subcommittee on 26 June of this year is a case in point, where the witness failed even to discuss the subject on which he was requested to testify, which was on growing Wahhabi influence in the United States. The FBI Director himself has a splendid staff of speechwriters who painstakingly avoid using the words ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ in the same sentence. Such dissembling does a disservice to the American public and arguably has harmed efforts to protect the country from terrorism.
“Part of the trepidation against honestly discussing the issue is the atmosphere of fear and intimidation surrounding part of the discourse. Oftentimes as soon as a non-Muslim notes that nearly 100 percent rate of terrorist attacks were perpetrated in recent years by those who call themselves Muslim, certain self-proclaimed Muslim ‘leaders’ in the United States take to the airwaves, the press and the Internet to denounce the critic as being ‘racist’ or ‘bigoted.’ Some of their non-Muslim friends have done the same, creating a chilling effect on open discussion, leading to poor public understanding of the conflict at hand.”
Try to think back to the last time you saw the images of September 11th on television or in the mainstream media newspapers and magazines? Chances are it was either directly after the attacks or during a memorial segment commemorating the anniversary of those attacks.
The truth is that the mainstream media removed the images of September 11th from our sight – the images of death and destruction, the murder of thousands of innocents, the people who chose to leap to their deaths rather than burn alive – because they deemed the images “too disturbing” for us to see.
Try to remember the last time you heard an ingenuous, learned, intelligent discussion about the root causes of Islamist terrorism on a news program or a news issues television show. Most likely it was directly after 9/11. The overwhelming majority of inspection done on the issue today centers on the treatment – or perceived mistreatment – of radical Islamofascists caught on the field of battle or those who were apprehended for being implicated in plots to slaughter innocents both here in the United States and abroad.
Then, of course, we have the pseudo-intellectual network talking heads and anti-war zealots who insist that it is the radical Islamist, caught with AK-47 in hand, who is the victim of the oppression that America has to offer. It couldn’t possibly be that the person pulling the trigger or detonating the suicide vest is to blame. America’s foreign policy “made them do it.”
The fact of the matter is this: The politically correct mainstream media; agenda-driven, sensationalistic, emotionally opportunistic, one-sided and uneducated, has assumed, nay commandeered, the role of arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.
They have crowned themselves “deciders” of what is appropriate for our consumption and what is not. They have come to dictate, in totalitarian fashion, the parameters of any public conversation with regard to the most important issue of the day, the survival of our nation.
Proof of this can be found in the absence of any pictures or footage of the 9/11 attacks on news broadcasts. It can be found in their grotesque and politically correct reluctance to even speak the words “Islam” and “terrorism” in the same sentence.
It can be found in their refusal to acknowledge that almost 100% of the legitimately defined terrorist acts are perpetrated at the hands of Wahhabist terrorists – Islamist radicals, Islamist fundamentalists – dedicated to the demise of Western Civilization and the establishment of a global Caliphate.
It can be found in the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans and Westerners can’t even explain the difference between the Sunni and Shi’ite sects of Islam.
In his 2003 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, The Institute of World Politics’ Dr. Michael Waller stated:
“The testimony of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before this subcommittee on 26 June of this year is a case in point, where the witness failed even to discuss the subject on which he was requested to testify, which was on growing Wahhabi influence in the United States. The FBI Director himself has a splendid staff of speechwriters who painstakingly avoid using the words ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ in the same sentence. Such dissembling does a disservice to the American public and arguably has harmed efforts to protect the country from terrorism.
“Part of the trepidation against honestly discussing the issue is the atmosphere of fear and intimidation surrounding part of the discourse. Oftentimes as soon as a non-Muslim notes that nearly 100 percent rate of terrorist attacks were perpetrated in recent years by those who call themselves Muslim, certain self-proclaimed Muslim ‘leaders’ in the United States take to the airwaves, the press and the Internet to denounce the critic as being ‘racist’ or ‘bigoted.’ Some of their non-Muslim friends have done the same, creating a chilling effect on open discussion, leading to poor public understanding of the conflict at hand.”
We see in this instance that suspicious and most likely nefarious forces from within the Islamofascist community work in parallel with the American Fourth Estate to quell honest and open dialogue and debate on the root causes of Islamofascist aggression.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing federal court case, has been cited by most every terrorism and counterterrorism expert and analyst as having links to Hamas.
Several of their high-ranking officials have been found to have had ties to terrorist organizations. Yet, incredibly, in the face of this knowledge, the FBI and other governmental agencies continue to engage CAIR as a credible civil rights group, going as far as to enlist their “help” in the training of government personnel on the issue of tolerance toward the Islamic community.
The mainstream media and organizations like CAIR are just two obstructionist entities regarding the open and honest discussion of the causes of radical Islamist terrorism, Islamofascist aggression. Their motives are ideologically driven.
The mainstream media has an embedded progressive-liberal agenda – an anti-American bias, as it were – that has been documented in research done by the Pew Public Policy Research Center. Organizations like CAIR have a vested interest in seeing the radical and unyielding tenets of Islam prevail over American doctrine as mandated by the US Constitution.
But, even though these two forces are formidable, even though they, both singularly and collectively, pose a serious and substantial threat to our nation’s very existence, the greatest threat to the longevity of our country, to our survival as a nation, is our own apathy.
The average American spends more time watching reality television than they do exploring the real threat facing our nation in Islamofascist aggression. Most haven’t any idea that mosques promoting Wahhabism ideology, ideology that preaches hate for the West and the downfall of the United States, funded by Saudi Arabia, exist in our own neighborhoods, our own towns and cities.
One document of Wahhabist origin brought to light by the Holy Land Foundation trial, the Ikhwan in America, states:
"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process.' The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
As we apathetically, narcissistically, place our own lives, our own self-importance, our own wants and desires above our responsibility to gather knowledge on a foe whose mission is the demise of our very way of life, that foe exists, recruits, trains and plots in our own neighborhoods, our own religious communities and our own government agencies.
We, We the People, are too lazy, too comfortable, too apathetic to engage in our constitutionally mandated civic responsibility to be aware, to provide proper government oversight. Instead we allow the mainstream media to dictate the political agenda and the faux-civil rights organizations to set the ideological parameters.
We are our own worst enemy. Think about that, think about the abdication of our civic responsibilities, the next time you are watching your child sleep, the next time you are worried about their future. Then do something about it.
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Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for Basics Project a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, Basics Project, partnered in producing the first ever national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel and is the host of the NMJ Radio show broadcast global on NetTalkWorld global talk radio and broadcast live on BlogTalk Radio. He is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, syndicated on over 25 stations nationally and on The Captain's America Radio Show catering to the US Armed Forces around the world, as well as an occasional guests on radio programs across the country. His opinion-editorials are syndicated nationally and he is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements. He can be contacted at
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