Omar Mateem, a 29 year old American citizen, turned Jihadist, was born in the U.S., and responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. He was killed at the scene by an American SWAT team. He mentioned ISIS in his 911 call to police, and called out Islamic prayers while massacring 50 innocents and as many wounded in an Orlando nightclub early Sunday, June 12, 2016.

Omar Mateem, was an Internet-ISIS-inspired American, living and growing up in the “Land of the Free.” Here in the U.S. he earned an associate degree in criminal justice technology in 2006. A year later, he was hired by one of the world’s premier private security companies, G4S. And then, in 2009, he got married and bought a home- he was living the American Dream. While domestic troubles emerged, his wife, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, divorced him in 2011, after he abused her, this hardly reason to turn to ISIS.

He subsequently murdered over 50 Americans and hospitalized another fifty-plus innocent club goers in Orlando, Florida. To what avail? Has the idea of an Islamist Caliphate been moved forward in any way? No. Innocents were murdered. Full-stop.

That is, he was born of Afghan parents allowed to immigrate here, was living well, taking advantage of the education, the abundant privileges, the great opportunities and comfort we have here in the United States, where the Law of the Land prevails, yet identified with an online ideology of ISIS; a Takfiri Salafist organization who oppress women, deny them education, condemn homosexuality (even while these same radicals enjoy “dancing boys” who are often sodomized and Mullahs abuse of youthful boys in their radical Madrassas).

The same ideology prevails over all global terrorism Saudi-sponsored ‪#‎TakfiriDeobandi‬ and ‪#‎Wahhabi‬ ideology: ISIS, Taliban, al Qaeda, ASJW, LeT, Haqqani Network, Boko Haram, al-Nusrah Front, Saudi funded Ahl al-Hadith movement of Deobandi and Wahhabis/Salafist groups, et.al.. All use the same cultish ideology, they destroy Muslim sites to Mohammed (PBUH) (did you know that!?), decimate irreplaceable, historical sites in the wake of their evil trail, starting as far back as 1996 with Buddhas of Bamian to more recently, Shia sites in Syria and Iraq- Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Sufi religious sites, churches and Mosques destroyed. You’ll remember ISIS beheaded the long line of Jordanians, then, Christians, and they beheaded a Muslim teenager in Iraq recently, for being late for prayers in the local mosque! That is what these Islamists are like, yet appeal to the likes of privileged youth such as Omar Mateem. This should be a reminder that it is not the uneducated, it is not poverty that leads to this Ideological violence. The 9/11 Saudis were middle class and well educated.

Former US President George W. Bush’s quip about Islam is the “Religion of Peace” was no more helpful than U.S. President Obama through eight years in office and his latest speech consistently failing  to mention “Islamist” terrorist, even as the Egyptian Muslim president President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi spoke early this year candidly calling it what it was: “We are in need of a religious revolution,” el-Sisi told imams at al-Azhar University in Cairo. The speech commemorated the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah,” el-Sisi said. “The entire world … is waiting for your next move … because [the Islamic world] is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands.”

The U.S.  and Western world cannot afford Politically Correct language in matters of Islamist terrorism, as it minimizes reality. Appeasement strategy emboldens radicals who only understand strength and Jihad, and encourages an erroneous default to the obfuscation of the “Hate Crime” narrative. This is a hate crime AND a terrorist attack. They can be both.

The following speaks volumes about the ruthless lack of Ramadan spirit in Islamist Jihadist cults:Homeland Security Committee Congressman Peter King: “Keep in mind it is Ramadan, and ISIS likes to carry out spectacular attacks during this season…”

It would make as little sense as it would if Catholics were inclined to carry out a slaughter of 50 murders, and as many wounded, during Lent.

That the Feds had interviewed Omar Mateen twice and let him go is telling (also, an Internet inspired terrorist, Major Nidal Husan of Fort Brooks, was interviewed by the FBI prior to his Jihad inspired rampage against unarmed young troops [labelled “workplace violence” at the time] and one of the Tsarnaev brothers interviewed by the FBI, one became the Boston Bomber, none of whom were detained or tailed). This confirms our American national respect for ethnic and religious people, and the individual freedoms of all citizens, including American-born Muslims (his parents are from Afghanistan). Despite suspicions and unlike Muslim countries, we Americans did not detain Mateen. nor was surveillance used. Perhaps we should have.

We are fair beyond most countries in the world, often to our own detriment and subsequent grief. We limit our chances to prevent such immoral, cruel and internationally condemned murderous acts by a single, cowardly Muslim-American, by our very freedoms and liberties. It is reminiscent of the insanity of the TTP in the 2014 massacre murdering over 141 innocents in Peshawar, Pakistan, including 132 children, by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) on a military-run school.

And earlier this year, January 2016, 22 killed in attack on Bacha Khan University in Pakistan.

Keep in mind, that Muslims themselves are also in grave danger from this radical ideology, particularly out-spoken moderate Sunnis, Shia, Ahmadis, Sufis, indeed, Hindus, Jews and Christians, are no safer in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, or the United States. The Islamist terrorist, namely, radical Wahhabi/ Salafist “fundamentalist” Sunni Jihadists consider themselves the Gatekeepers of Islam. A genocide of Shia by radical Islamists has been going on unchecked for decades, under the misnomer of “Secularism.”

I really don’t want to hear any more about American Islamophobia! That said, the American foreign policy and errant strategy, over the Middle East, American dependency on Saudi petro-dollars, the mistakes in judgement from Bush and Obama, compounding errors of twenty years of misjudgment, invading Iraq with a conventional war state of mind, and then pulling out is our MO, since Vietnam illustrates even the best of intentions go awry.

A quote from a dear friend of mine, Colonel Joseph Collins, (Retired),  addresses the difficulty of U.S. Foreign Policy objectives and the necessity to learn from mistakes:

“…in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, our [U.S.] experiences have on the whole been difficult, costly and indecisive. The ability of the enemy to fight from sanctuary, his unwillingness to present himself for destruction by our superior technology, the incapacity of host governments, and the loss of public support occasioned by protracted and indecisive combat all militated against clear-cut success. The historical record of large-scale, foreign expeditionary forces in counterinsurgencies is a poor one. While small-scale advise-and assist missions have often been successful, large-scale expeditionary force COIN efforts do not play to American strengths and if experience is any guide, are not likely to lead to success in securing U.S. strategic objectives.” – “Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War,” p412, Joseph Collins, Professor U.S. War College.

 

If South Asians reading this are wondering “what U.S. strategic objectives?” The answer: Stability in the region.

The U.S. Special Forces train in both Iraq and Afghanistan and care deeply about the Muslim allies with whom they have worked. They often build strong bonds. They are building local armies and security police that can restrain Taliban and ISIS. These regions nevertheless present a dangerous training environment occasioned by inserted spies, corruption and quick turn-about traitors.

It is no wonder that the Middle East and South Asia are skeptical of us, and that even the sympathetic Iraqi Army we train, and Afghan national army do not trust our presence or likelihood for pre-maturely pulling out leaving our own Special Forces and their nascent Armies vulnerable to extremists: ISIS filled the Iraqi vacuum, Taliban spills into Afghan strongholds that now insist on bargaining, as if they are a state.

The sooner we realize that we need to work together Western society and Middle East and South Asian leaders, the sooner we can solve what is an ideology that metastasizes and infects your children and ours. Our enemy is a common enemy; not “terror” or “violent extremism” but a global jihadi movement, a modern totalitarian ideology rooted in the doctrines and martial history of Islam.

Wahhabism/Salafism is eighteenth-century revivalist movement who advocates a purging the “cult of saints”, and shrine and tomb visitation, bans any entertainment or women’s education considering it to be shirk. Muhammad bin Saud joined the medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and the eventual alliance of ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud, later there developed a Deobandi version, led to the Madrassas that continue to this day teaching a cult version of Islam that allows suicide bombing (a modern aberration), and sabotaging youthful minds or the disenfranchised, but also inspiring well-educated middle class individuals, in its ideological appeals to a tainted version of purism.

The American and European politically-correct generation, and the unwillingness of South Asian, or Middle Eastern leaders to meet this head-on, allows it to be emboldened. There is a toxic political agenda that corrupts our national security practices, precluding the kind of clear-eyed threat analysis and strategic response that led to victory in the ideology of the Cold War. We must not expound in platitudes: “bomb them into the stone age,” rhetoric is ignorance. That kills civilians and recruits more Jihadists. We must face the global need to devise a clear plan to defeat it against its own ideology, which requires communication and cooperation between countries. This will require working with moderate Muslims and the Western world, particularly the United States leadership in regaining credibility and trust lost decades ago.

Appeasement strategies as well as conventional invasion and “Shock and Awe” policies have proven ineffective with ISIS and Taliban and all Jihadists. What is required is commitment involving all countries against terrorism in a coalition of concerted ideological battle against Internet recruitment, and clearly defined objectives on the ground together, including training nationalist armies and security forces of the region, with civil-military cooperation towards the common goal of eradication of Jihadists inclusive of Muslims themselves, with invited assistance from the Western alliances. Avoiding terms; falsely declaring “Mission Accomplished;” Walking away prematurely is not a strategy.

 

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