President Obama’s policies on National Defense and Foreign Policy have been in the news quite a bit lately now that Obama-care has passed and Congress is in recess. A few days ago I outlined how the Obama Administration announced that terms such as “Islamic Extremism” will be stripped from the central document defining the United States’ stances on National Security. It has now come to light that the Administration has decided to pull nations like Syria, Iran and Lebanon from the list of places where people traveling into the US will be put under heavier scrutiny by the FAA.

These nations were added to the list in January in response to the Underwear Bomber, Umar Faroul Abdul Mutallab, attempting to detonate a bomb hidden on his person as the international flight that he was a passenger on started it’s decent for landing over Detroit, Mi.

This from The World Tribune Online,

Officials said Syria was one of 14 countries exempted from additional airport security, a measure imposed in January 2010, Middle East Newsline reported. They said the regime of President Bashar Assad was cooperating in helping screen passengers on flights to the West.

“There are new measures that don’t require special treatment of passengers from Syria and other Muslim states,” an official said.

On April 6, the administration of President Barack Obama said the exemptions would also affect Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

For more than three months, passengers who came from these countries had been subjected to additional inspection, including patting down their entire body before boarding flights to the United States. Iran, Sudan and Syria have been on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist sponsors.

The measures were instituted on Jan. 3 in the wake of a failed bombing of a U.S. airliner by an Al Qaida agent from Nigeria. The would-be bomber, Omar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, had been on a no-fly list meant to prevent entry to the United States.

Officials said President Barack Obama ordered the review that led to the removal of Iran, Syria and other countries from a list that required intensified security measures. They said Obama has sought to base passenger screening in accordance with specific threats to the United States.

“These new, enhanced measures are part of a dynamic, threat-based aviation security system covering all passengers travelling by air to the U.S. while focusing security measures in a more effective and efficient manner to ensure the safety and security of the travelling public,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

I think the important question here is why wouldn’t we want to watch individuals coming from active terrorist sponsoring Nations closer than others? When looking at the reason the Nations were added to the list in the first place, I see no reason why the American People should be put at increased risk by removing them.

In almost every single terrorist attack on American targets, the individuals involved and the organizations claiming responsibility have originated in countries like Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. It is no mystery to anyone that these Nations have a severe problem managing the activities of groups like al-Qaeda with in their borders. For some of these Nations, it’s also clear that they even quietly support and sanction the efforts of terrorism. One of these Nations is Iran, which incidentally was a name removed from the watch list and, of late, has threatened the US by announcing that if Iran is attacked in any way over their nuclear ambitions, “There will be nuclear detonations inside US cities.”

There is also a large amount of conclusive evidence that points to the support of Iraqi insurgents in the form of explosives and small arms coming directly from interests within Iran as well as Syria.

Abdul Mutallab obtained the explosives and support in Yemen from the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. He then traveled to Giana and purchased a one way ticket with cash to Detroit with a connection in Amsterdam.

Abdul Mutallab made it increasingly clear that using watch lists with individual names was not a broad enough measure to prevent terrorism on US soil. He flew into the US with no luggage and on a one way ticket paid for with cash. He was already listed on a no fly list and he had no issues smuggling explosives onto the plane because he was not screened by individuals under FAA jurisdiction.

One of the quoted reasons for lessening security on individuals coming from these nations was the increased cooperation by the Syrian Government on passenger screening. After all, shouldn’t we trust them to screen their terrorists? Oh wait….

While the systemic failure was very evident, President Obama’s DHS Secretary, Janet Napalitano, was championing the system by announcing, “The system worked!”

It seems this “head in the sand” kind of approach has infected the current Administration in a big way, as evidenced by them, once again, making it easier for terrorists to do harm to US interests, including the American People.

It is obvious to most that the system is not currently working and anything done to further weaken our ability to vet out possible threats to our security internationally should be viewed as pure lunacy at this point.

This is just the icing on the cake, however. I’m my next post, I’ll talk about how the Obama Administrations’ policies are setting us up for a major power shift internationally and we could cease to be a player in the world community.

On April 7th, the Obama Administration announced it will be striping terms like “Islamic Extremism” from the central document defining the United States’ stances on national security. Evidentially, the Administration is afraid of alienating Islamic nations. Members of the Administration said that defining the war on terror as a war against Islamic extremism would be viewing Muslim nations through a lens of terror. I am of the opinion that doing so may not entirely be a bad idea. It wasn’t the IRA who killed almost 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

More and more these days, Islamic leaders are seeing a climate of tolerance in the western world. This climate of tolerance is creating an environment where they are no longer afraid to come out and publicly share their views on subjects like Jihad and the killing of non-Muslims. Below is a video of British Mullah Anjum Chaudri describing how he believes the killing of “non-believers” is justified. This is not an isolated thing as video after video of major players in the Muslim world have come out in support of the “convert or die” mentality.

Calling for Global Jihad…

Espousing the killing of the Jews.

These are but a few examples of what we are dealing with. These people believe that their religion gives them the right to subjugate and or kill you for not believing in their God. This fanaticism has driven thousands to strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up taking as many as possible with them. This “Religion of Peace” convinced men that blowing up the World Trade Center and killing 2800+ Americans was justified because they didn’t believe in Muhammad. It convinced Nidal Hassan in Texas to massacre 13 Soldiers and wound another 30 while screaming “Allah Akbar” in the name of his religion.

In the month of March, 2010, there were 165 attacks abroad perpetrated by extremists in 15 different nations. These attacks killed 1300+ innocents and critically wounded another 2000+. They call it the “Religion of Peace” but as a friend of mine, Angelo of ConservativeRule.com, likes to put it, Islam is the “Religion of Pieces”. We know where these people came from and we know their motivations.

Islamo-fascism is sprouting up all over the globe. Most people understand that countries like Yemen and Pakistan are hotbeds for terrorism, providing cover for jihadist training camps and affording known figures in the terrorist world aid. What most people are not aware of is that this fanaticism is spreading everywhere like wildfire. Along with the Middle East and Northern Africa, groups like al-Qaeda now have a strong presence in Asian nations like Japan and the Philippines and there are known Islamic terrorist organisations in Chile, Honduras and Columbia as well.

Countries like Russia know the threat well. On March 29th, 2 “Black Widow” female Chechnyans with bombs strapped to their bodies bombed 2 Russian train stations killing 38 people and wounding another 64. An Islamic group from the Northern Caucasus region claimed responsibility for the acts. Russia is a country that has been hit especially hard over the last 10 years. Back in September, 2004, Islamic terrorists took 1,100 hostages at The Beslan School in in the North Causasus. The resulting bloodbath left 334 hostages dead, 186 were school children, and hundreds injured and many reported missing.

What happened in Russia was horrible and inexcusable but no one was hit harder in one single terrorist action than the United States. It’s amazing to me how quickly some forget that day. I remember it well; I watched it live on the television unfolding before my astonished eyes.

Our current government is so quick to denounce these facts that they weaken us. We are no longer to call an act of terrorism for what it is but instead, a “man made disaster”.

Nations like Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia claim to be against violence in the name of Islam but time and again have been proven to harbour, finance and spread terrorism. Whether it be through direct support or a lack of action, nations that allow terrorism to propagate should be held accountable. If a terrorist act was perpetrated by individuals from Yemen, trained in Yemen and allowed to live in Yemen then Yemen has some responsibility in the situation.

If we don’t hold these nations accountable for their complicity then the war on terror will never be won. Mr. Obama’s willingness to be soft on terror with his warm and fuzzy policies, entertaining civilian trials for those that conspire to kill us and his refusal to confront nations like Iran and their nuclear ambitions will only serve to weaken our ability to protect our homeland.

Iran is an example of how disastrous Obama’s policies could be. Because he drug his feet on the issue of Iran becoming a nuclear state, the material and technology they are developing could very well end up in the hands of a terrorist group bent on detonating a nuclear or dirty bomb on US soil. The resulting loss of life would be staggering and possibly reach well into the hundreds of thousands. Because of his lack of support for Israel, our only ally in the Middle East, nations like Russia and China have now come out saying that an Israeli attack on Iran would result in a “world war”. With the support of the United States, Russia and China would not have been so willing to attempt to tie up Israel’s ability to protect itself from the threat of a nation who’s leader openly calls for the total annihilation of their country.

The Obama Administration’s stance on terror is weakening us and could very well result in another 9/11 style attack on US soil. I pray everyday that it never happens but it seems inevitable.

We need hard lined policies designed to combat this threat to our security and to freedom and liberty world wide. Now is not the time to join hands and sing Kumbayah. Now is the time to take the fight to those who would hurt us. Now is the time to tell these terrorist harbouring nations that we will not allow them to stand by as Islamic terrorist organisations train and prepare on their soil. I can’t remember ever reading about any non-Islamic group detonating anything on US soil unless you include Bill Ayers or the Black Panthers. I don’t need to point out the connections there.

Now is the time to do what ever is necessary to ensure the security of America and free people everywhere. I don’t know about you, but if I knew someone wanted to kill me and I saw them rushing at me with a knife, I’d put em down first and worry about everything else later. This is life or death, not foreign diplomacy.

On March 4th, Sen. John McCain(R-AR) and Sen. Joe Lieberman(D-CT) introduced new legislation aimed at streamlining the arrest, interrogation and detainment process for what they call “Enemy Belligerents”.

The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 was received with little fan fair and almost zero media coverage. Do a Google search utilizing the name of the bill to see that outlets like MSNBC, CNN and the traditional networks like ABC, NBC and CBS don’t come up at all.

Considering this bill is set to give the President of the United States the power to arbitrarily suspend habeas corpus on a whim, one would think more coverage would exist.

Click here to read the full text of the bill and here to read Sen. John McCain’s statement to the Senate.

The only major news outlet to pick this up, however scant their coverage, was Fox News.

The legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., would result in banning all civilian trials for terror suspects who have been classified as enemy combatants and forcing their cases into military commissions.

The bill lays out “comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” according to a release from McCain’s office.

“Unprivileged enemy belligerents considered to be a ‘high-value detainee’” would be required “to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the President,” the release states.

Mandating military tribunals instead of civilian trials for terrorists sounds like a great proposition and should be the standard. The issue I have with this bill is the broad scope and loose language it contains.

Contained in this bill are provisions to detain indefinitely any individual deemed a “possible threat” with no provisions to differentiate between enemy terrorist combatants taken from the battle field and American citizens simply exercising their first amendment rights.

This bill allows, at the discretion of the CIA, FBI, DHS or the President, for someone to be held indefinitely without charges or representation; basically without any miranda rights what so ever, whether they committed a crime or not.

You could be thrown into a deep hole in some secret prison for the rest of your life without breaking a single law and without ever having the ability to redress your accusers. There is no accountability built into this travesty of a bill to check abuse by the governing body of this Nation and no safe guards that it won’t be used for other reasons. The definitions contained within the bill are so vague and loose, anyone could be classified as an “Enemy Belligerent”.

Terrorists should be interrogated and imprisoned long enough to gain as much intelligence as possible. The ultimate goal and end result should be a military tribunal to protect our intelligence community and gathering methods and to ensure justice is done. Although they should not be given the same rights and protections as American citizens, with all the revelations that have come out over the last few months about the activities of the Dept. of Homeland Security, the propensity for abuse encapsulated in this far reaching and broad legislation is easy to see.

Here is a paragraph from a DHS report on domestic extremism.

Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Quite a few of us could easily fit into the above definition simply for voicing a dissenting view. I vocally express my displeasure with the Federal Government right here on this website. Should they consider me a threat because of my discontent? Should I be detained for possible “future crimes” I may commit down the line? I’m here to inform and share my opinions and am grateful for the opportunity to do so because of the 1st Amendment. Lets not forget why we are here; the dissent and discontent of our Founders who would be turning over in their graves right now if they could read this bill.

I was very surprised to see McCain’s name on this bill. With all due respect and gratefulness to Sen. McCain for the great sacrifices he made for his Country, you would think he would know better than this. He spent the better part of six years as an Enemy Belligerent in the custody of the Viet Cong.

This bill is downright Orwellian in nature and unconstitutional on so many different levels. Where is the line drawn and who will decide who is and isn’t a possible threat? Where is the check to create balance in this proposed system? The American people simply MUST stand up against this extreme violation of the principals that this great Nation was founded on.

They have been chipping away at The Constitution bit by bit for the last 150 years. They just switched from a chisel to a jack hammer.