Last week, Barack Obama’s message to the world was: “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” This week, Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security’s message to conservatives was: the United States may soon be at war with you.
According to a new report emanating from DHS, it’s no longer Islamic terrorism — or “man-caused terrorism” in the new DHS parlance — that we have to fear most, but small government, anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-illegal immigration, pro-military conservatives. In other words, most of the country.

The DHS report’s title is, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” That’s a mouthful. Right-wing. Extremism. Fueling. Resurgence. Radicalization. The threat is made out to be so sinister and so imminent — it’s enough to make you want to jump into bed and pull the covers over your head.

The report warns of potential terrorist acts from “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority” as well as “groups and individuals that are dedicated a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Particularly galling is the report’s lumping together of racists and Americans who take a conservative stance on issues like marriage and the sanctity of life. The assumption seems to be that racist and pro-life views spring from the same mindset. In truth, though, it’s the abortion industry that disproportionately targets black babies and whose largest member, Planned Parenthood, has overtly racist roots.

Potential domestic terrorists are a big concern of the Obama administration. Actual ones aren’t. A year ago Barack Obama and his allies were pooh-poohing his relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Obama brushed off the controversy surrounding Ayers, trying to portray him as just a “guy who lives in my neighborhood,” even though he was co-founder of the violent radical leftwing organization the Weather Underground, which conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings, resulting in real deaths.

The report was issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis within DHS. With a name like that you’d think the report would include some data, evidence, references — something. But it has very little of any of that. It’s full of abstractions, speculation and out-dated anecdotes of isolated acts of violence. As the report states, DHS has no “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.”
We have become accustomed to authoritarian regimes in places like China, Burma and Cuba being so afraid of their own people that they see the greatest threat to national security as coming from within. It’s alarming to see inklings of that same mindset from America’s leaders.

If the Department of Homeland Security is serious about cracking down on organized violence, it should look to the Left. The vast majority of instances of political violence occurring over the last decade or so have been committed by leftwing groups.

DHS would do well to investigate the anarchists and communists who stormed the streets of Minneapolis-St. Paul during last year’s Republican National Convention, or the radical animal rights groups that bomb medical labs and threaten university researchers with violence. And it should not forget about the homosexual activists who attacked churches after voters passed Proposition 8 to defend traditional marriage in California.

The report’s most offensive intimation is that our heroes returning from the battlefield are susceptible to “recruitment and radicalization” by other rightwing extremists if they are “disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war…” Would that the Feds placed as much emphasis on combating Muslim radicalization in American prisons and mosques.

The DHS report is sure to reinforce the beliefs of many on the Left. Chris Matthews recently called pro-life advocates “terrorists,” and Rosie O’Donnell once blurted that “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America…” For this sort of thinking to become policy for a major executive branch department is outrageous.

Obama likes to compare himself to Lincoln, FDR and JFK. But so far he more closely resembles Richard Nixon in one important way. Nixon had his “Enemies List,” whose purpose was to determine, as Nixon White House Counsel John Dean described it bluntly, “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Like Nixon, Obama has signaled that he will not let opposition to his agenda go unpunished. For Rush and conservative talk radio, there’s the Fairness Doctrine. For gun owners and small government enthusiasts, it’s a DHS official knocking at your door.

Whatever happened to the Obama who claimed during the campaign that he wanted to bring us all together? Nixon never claimed to be a unifier; Obama’s election depended on the idea that he was one.

By issuing this report, DHS betrays an understanding of how radical Obama’s policies are — so radical that they might set off a violent response from disgruntled citizens. But it also betrays an ignorance of the nature of those who fall into the categories described in the report.

Scores of millions of Americans are coming to realize that the country they once knew is quickly being destroyed. Understandably, they are upset and want to take action. But they won’t resort to violence, in part because they know that in a democracy change will come when enough citizens are informed about what’s going on and vote accordingly.

That’s the point of the Tea Parties. Nobody believes Obama or his allies will be much swayed by the outpouring of concern and anger evident at these rallies. But the rallies do help to educate the public about how radical Obama’s agenda is. And they help conservatives blow off a little steam and unite in solidarity around a common cause. What’s so threatening about that?

President Obama says he’s a Christian, but that doesn’t mean he won’t appoint Muslims to key positions in his administration in return for Muslim support during the election. Muslim groups are fretting that none have been appointed yet, and they want that to change. Polls showed about nine in 10 American Muslims voted for Obama last fall, and they want something to show for it. Don’t be surprised if Obama gives them what they want.

Politicians usually reward their supporters. But the way they do it — and just who they reward — is quite important.

Last weekend, news broke that various “community groups” are urging our “community-organizer-in-chief” to hire more Muslims. The Los Angeles Times reported that J. Saleh Williams, program coordinator for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association, “sifted through more than 300 names” and forwarded a book of 45 résumés to the White House. Evidently, the White House is eager for the vetting help. The effort, stated the Times, was “bumped up two weeks ahead of schedule because White House officials heard about the venture.”

The Times quotes Abdul Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Democrats saying, “Muslims are not looking for handouts. We’re just looking for equal opportunity and inclusiveness.” Not to mention a little influence. A spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations didn’t mince words, saying, “We’re hoping that once [Attorney General] Eric Holder puts the [Justice] department in order and places people in different positions, we can reestablish what were very positive relations [with the FBI] in our 15-year history.” You may recall that the FBI terminated its “very positive relations” with CAIR after it was declared an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation.

Such faith-based hiring comports with the liberal ideal of equal representation, whereby each constituency is represented in every area of public life in direct proportion to their numbers in the overall population.

Every possible demographic variable must be accounted for: sex, religion, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and so forth. When Obama gets around to filling the more than 8,000 administration jobs that remained unfilled, his administration will end up looking like a cross-section of America.

Except, sadly, when it comes to two groups — tax cheats, from which the administration seems determined to oversample, and conservatives, of whom we can expect none. Which is a shame since most Americans want a variety of political viewpoints in the room when big decisions are made.

There is a tinge of hypocrisy in the Left’s desire for faith-based hiring. I remember the hyperventilating in Washington when it was learned that the Bush administration made an effort to hire graduates of Regent University Law School, which was founded by Pat Robertson.

The liberal blogosphere blew up, citing it as yet another example of Bush subordinating ability to politics in hiring decisions. Reporters were aghast to discover that the school’s mission is to provide “Christian leadership to change the world.” They mocked the university for having the temerity to teach that man’s law ought not to preclude God’s law. Leftwing groups warned that America was on the verge of a theocracy and that the “separation of church and state” was under assault.

I’m not hearing much concern about the “separation of mosque and state” today from those groups. Of course, according to the Left, it is preferable to have ardent Muslims in the White House than it is to have believing Christians. For as Rosie O’Donnell once blurted, “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”

Will Obama hire Muslims only for the political value? He needn’t — he’s already done plenty to win them over. The press gleefully told us that Obama was the first president to mention Muslims in his inaugural address. And his first sit down interview was with the Arabic Al Arabiya news channel. During that encounter, Obama “reassured” Muslims the world over that that Americans are not their enemies. In recent days, the president sent a video to Tehran with the plea to begin a new relationship “…that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”

As naïve as that is, Obama did something yesterday that no US president should ever do: he bowed to a foreign leader. Worse still, he did it to the Saudi King. At the G-20 Summit yesterday, Obama did a full bow from the waist when he met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This is never done! A U.S. president is never supposed to bow before foreign royalty. He didn’t bow before Queen Elizabeth yesterday. His act has many wondering whether it is another signal to the Muslim world.

Obama’s message of “mutual respect” is also the one Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been delivering around the world. When she hasn’t been reassuring China that its egregious human rights record will be no obstacle to warmer relations with the U.S., Clinton has been apologizing to Muslim governments for the supposedly egregious human rights violations of the Bush administration, which included liberating millions of their brethren in two countries at the cost of thousands of American lives.

In response to the book of Muslim résumés sent to the president, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said, “The White House appreciates the input from concerned outside organizations as we fully consider all applicants regardless of their religion or national origin, and as we continue to fill positions throughout the administration.”

Advocacy groups have every right to send their lists to the White House. It’s standard practice. And the president can pick whomever he wants to fill out his administration. But if Obama’s choices are being made on the basis of identity politics rather than ability and competence, it would mark a clear departure for an administration the media have been telling us is made up of the “best and the brightest.” On the bright side, it may awaken the few Americans still clinging to the fantasy of a post partisan presidency.

Except—too often, alas—actual terrorists.

The ones in Iraq have been called “very powerful, very tenacious insurgents” by CBS’ Katie Couric and “patriots” by media mogul Ted Turner. To his credit, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann seems unafraid to call terrorists by their rightful name. But they’re still not as a bad as Fox News, which he has branded “worse than Al Qaeda.”

Then there’s the Bush administration, which The View’s Joy Behar called “liars and murderers.” Speaking of the president, it was refreshing to hear this description of him a couple years back by a CBS reporter:

“….He’s a very, very wily character. Fascinating man in background. He is genuinely religious, genuinely humble, there are no fancy clothes, fancy cars… He is a very modest man and said to be absolutely incorruptible as well. He’s a fascinating character.”

Oh, wait. My fault. That was the reporter’s description of Iranian “President” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A man who denies the Holocaust and vows to “wipe Israel off the map” is undoubtedly “fascinating,” though more colorful adjectives spring more readily to my mind. But “absolutely incorruptible” is a bizarre way—an inaccurate way—to describe a man who can claim there are no homosexuals in Iran only because the government he leads kills those who speak up.

So what’s my point? Considered separately, any of these instances of overt anti-Americanism and feeble attempts at moral equivocation seems rather harmless. But taken together, they signal a trend of waning interest and what author Andrew McCarthy calls “willful blindness” by the media as to the root cause of so much violence and terrorism around the world.

Consider media coverage of last November’s Mumbai terrorist attacks, which left more than 170 dead. While the media were quick to link the group responsible, Lashkar-e-Taiba, to the territorial battle over the Kashmir valley, they were largely silent when it came to the group’s main objectives: to establish an Islamic state in South Asia and annihilate all “enemies of Islam,” including Hindus and Jews. The group’s professed anti-Semitism explains why the terrorists targeted the Chabad House Jewish Center, at which several people were slaughtered. The only terrorist to survive the attacks offered just one explanation for his role: “Islam is in danger,” he repeatedly told interrogators.

The media’s bewilderment about the motivations of Islamic violence was also evident in 2006 when Muslim student Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar rammed an SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina, injuring nine students. The Chapel Hill Herald, for instance, called his actions “inexplicable,” even though Taheri-azar had called 9-11 immediately after the crash, telling the operator that he had done it “to spread the will of Allah.”

And now there is evidence that the media’s ostrich-head-in-the-sand posture has been institutionalized. At the Associated Press, whose news is published by more than 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 T.V. and radio broadcasters, terrorist groups like Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade are often referred to as “militias.” Acts of terrorism are regularly called “revenge bombings” or “revenge attacks.” In many cases the AP has changed words of American and Israeli officials from, for instance, “terrorists” to “militias.”

In a 2006 AP story, Osama bin Laden was cited in a photo as an “Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.” And in the official AP Style Book, whose guidelines are the gold standard for newspapers and in journalism classrooms, neither the Taliban, Hezbollah nor Hamas is labeled as a terrorist entity, and Palestinians who blow up Israeli civilians are called “Palestinian militants.”

Not that journalists have much incentive for precision and accuracy when reporting on Islamic violence. Many surely remember the murders and fatwas issued in the aftermath of the Dutch cartoons depicting Mohammad as a terrorist. In late February, it was reported that Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, the Belarusian journalist sentenced to three years of hard labor for republishing those cartoons, is being held in a prison with no means of communication. This would seem to be a potential cause-celeb among our media elites. But their silence is deafening.

In 2005, as many as 25 people died in riots in Afghanistan over the American media’s spelling—or what one Muslim cleric called “desecration by misspelling”—of “Koran” with a “K” instead of a “Q,” thus reinforcing the old adage about watching your Ps and Qs.

And you know things are serious when the United Nations gets involved. As usual, though, the world body erred on the side of imbecility by issuing a nonbinding resolution on “Combating defamation of religions,” which, among other things, “expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” It also notes “with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001.”

But it was in the aftermath of 9-11—in 2006—that researchers Marshall and Gurr released a report finding that of 24 major armed conflicts taking place globally, a majority (13) involved Muslim governments or paramilitary groups on one or both sides of the fighting. They also found that Muslim nations were two-and-a-half times more likely than non-Muslim nations to be considered “at the greatest risk of neglecting or mismanaging emerging societal crises such that these conflicts escalate to serious violence and/or government instability.”

It is not defamation to point out that the jihadists who are attacking civilization are educated in madrasses – Islamic religious schools. They cite the Koran as their authority, and they follow the teachings of Muslim imams, who issue fatwas, religious decrees justifying the murder of infidels and moderate Muslims. They praise “Allah” as they kill and die. These clues make it clear that they aren’t merely militants, and that their motives stem from an extreme form of a particular religion, Islam.

Israel Putnam, in the battle for America’s freedom at Bunker Hill in 1775, told his freedom fighters: “Men, you are all marksmen—don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” One wonders how close a terrorist attack must come to the newsroom before the media think to notice the battle all around them.

Christian Science Monitor

Published: Sunday, April 26, 2009 12:02 a.m. MDT
“History is not history unless it is the truth.” — Abraham Lincoln

Most Americans understand history as an objective accounting of past events. In recent years, however, textbook publishers have come under increasing criticism for rewriting history. Claims are presented as facts while controversial material is whitewashed or omitted.

Today these trends are quite apparent in the way public school history books address Islam. In his 2008 study “Islam in the Classroom: what the textbooks tell us,” Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, reviewed 10 of the nation’s most widely used junior and senior high school history textbooks. The results should disturb anyone interested in conveying to our children a truthful history of the religion whose extreme adherents drive so many of today’s tragic headlines.

At a time when America is locked in a battle of ideas with Islamic extremists and other enemies of freedom, accurate knowledge is indispensable. Yet, Sewall’s findings underscore how political correctness is distorting the next generation’s understanding of this battle.

Let’s be clear. Religion is by nature a sensitive topic to teach in the classroom. And in a world where stereotypes wrongly tar all Muslims as being prone to violence, it’s understandable that schools would err on the side of caution. Indeed, they should affirm the piety and charity practiced by hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, an acknowledgement that should be extended to Christians as well. At the same time, textbooks shouldn’t cower from covering the violent periods of Muslim conquest or the Islamic beliefs that fundamentalists exploit for violent ends.

Sewall found that many textbooks gloss over or delete important facts. For example, in the 1990s, “jihad” — which has many meanings, among them “sacred” or “holy” struggle but also “holy war” — was defined in the Houghton Mifflin junior high school book only as a struggle “to do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil.”

The many acts of violence committed on behalf of Islam in the past decade have made that definition incomplete, to say the least. Yet, as ATC notes, “by 2005, Houghton Mifflin apparently had removed jihad from its entire series of social studies textbooks.”

In discussing sharia law, the Islamic code that can be used to subjugate women and deal death to wayward believers, many textbooks are intentionally vague. Holt Rinehart Winston’s 2006 “Medieval to Early Modern Times” junior high textbook states simply, “Sharia sets rewards for good behavior and punishments for crimes.” Another popular history textbook states, “Muslim law requires that Muslim leaders offer religious toleration.”

Descriptions of Islam since 9/11 are particularly disturbing. Though Islamic extremism has become a fact of life throughout much of the world, most of the reviewed textbooks suggest instead that poverty, ignorance and the existence of Israel are at the root of terrorism. The closest that any textbook gets to suggesting a faith-based component to terrorism is Glencoe’s “Modern Times,” which states broadly that “Muslims have not accommodated their religious beliefs to the modern world.”

The whitewashing of Islam becomes even more noticeable when contrasted with how history textbooks treat Christianity. One book describes the Crusades as “religious wars launched against Muslims by European Christians.” But when Muslims attacked Christians and took their land, the process is referred to as “building” an empire.

A McDougal Littell volume claims that non-Muslims in Muslim-ruled territories converted to Islam because “they were attracted by Islam’s message of equality and hope for salvation.” A good history class should teach students to ask critical questions. Are students asking how much of that “conversion” was coerced by the sword? Sadly, most texts gloss over Muslim leaders’ history of enslavement of “infidels” and their brutal treatment of women, which continues today in some countries.

In an interview, Sewall summed up the reactions of textbook publishers to his report. “In a word,” he said, “hostile.”

Sewall says the pressure tactics used by some Muslim groups on publishers to portray Islam in a favorable light amount to a kind of “cultural jihad.” This essentially is what the founder of the Council on Islamic Education, the main Islamic group for vetting textbooks in America, was saying when he described his work as a “bloodless revolution inside American junior high and high school classrooms.”

Sewall understands that historical inaccuracies sometimes take decades to be written out of textbooks. “Once lies are written into textbooks,” he says, “they tend to be perpetuated in new editions.” Which is one reason why Sewall will continue to make his case to publishers.

I hope Sewall has better success than I had. When I served as undersecretary of the Education Department under President Reagan, I discovered that a “values neutralism” was saturating school textbooks, seriously misleading our children about the nature of Soviet governance by, for instance, stating that women enjoyed the same rights as men and severely downplaying the suppression of basic human rights inherent in communist political systems.

In the same way, students today are being taught a distorted view of Islam. Having been on the front lines in the struggle to achieve the best education for our children, I understand that change will come only when teachers’ and parents’ voices are heard. Teachers need courage in overcoming political correctness by talking candidly about controversial topics like Islam. Parents must be engaged in their children’s education by participating on curriculum committees and communicating with teachers. Parents also should communicate with their members of Congress to ensure that textbook publishers are not being pressured to present a false account of history. Feel-good distortions of history don’t help our kids; they just help those who wish to do us harm.

?Gary Bauer is a former undersecretary of the Department of Education under President Reagan. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families.

© 2009 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved

This is very discouraging news for many reasons, not the least of which is that Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator wants Israel “wiped off the map” and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Last week, General Ataollah Salehi, commander of the Iranian army, said in a televised interview, “I don’t think we will need more than 11 days to wipe Israel out of existence.”

Israel is a key ally, a democratic republic on the front line in the war against Islamofascism. Iran is an Islamic theocracy led by a fanatical madman who is frantically seeking nuclear weapons. Israel is facing an existential threat and a second Holocaust from Iran. And yet we are pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Jew-hating terrorists in Hamas in exchange for support in confronting Iran. It’s like being told to pick your poison.

And what kind of state are we asking the Israelis to help create? Consider this report from last week’s Jerusalem Post:

“…a Palestinian Authority ‘military court’ on Tuesday sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after finding him guilty of selling land to Jews. The verdict came shortly after the PA’s chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, issued yet another fatwa (religious decree) banning Muslims from selling land or houses to Jews. …The man sentenced to death is Anwar Brigith, 59, from the village of Bet Umar, north of Hebron.

“The three-judge panel found the defendant guilty of violating PA laws that bar Palestinians from selling property to ‘the enemy.’ In its ruling, the court, which convened in Hebron, said that Brigith had acted in violation of a Palestinian ‘military law’ dating back to 1979, which states that it is forbidden for a Palestinian to sell land to Jews. The accused was also found guilty of violating a law dating back to 1958 that calls for a boycott against Israel, as well as another law from 1953 that bans trade with Israelis.

“The judges issued the verdict unanimously and pointed out that the defendant did not have the right to appeal…”

This is the evil we are demanding Israel make concessions to in exchange for support in dealing with Iran. It is obscene, but I bet you didn’t hear about it from Big Media, because it completely undermines the administration’s push for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Shlomo Mostofsky, president of the National Council of Young Israel representing 150 synagogues in the United States, issued a statement demanding action from the Obama Administration.

He said, “The United States cannot in good faith engage in a conversation about peace with the Palestinians while they continue to advocate a policy that is so deeply rooted in hatred. Before the U.S. can contemplate partnering with the Palestinian Authority … it must insist that they abandon these bigoted policies that incite hatred and ill-will against the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”

I couldn’t agree more.

After a January Pentagon report found that 61 former detainees had engaged in terrorist activities, several commentators concluded the answer was yes and suggested that conditions at the prison are to blame.

This may surprise you, but as a staunch proponent of the prison, I agree. But while many liberal commentators believe inhumane treatment and religious persecution transforms detainees into suicide bombers and high-level terrorists, I believe the opposite is true: that the unprecedented and extreme religious accommodation granted to Gitmo prisoners has created a culture of Islamic radicalization.

When news of the Pentagon report broke, some liberal pundits reflexively accused the American military. MSNBC flame-thrower Keith Olbermann told his audience about ex-Taliban fighter Said Ali al-Shihri, who, upon his release from Gitmo, became an Al Qaeda leader and was responsible for an attack on the American embassy in Yemen. Then Olbermann asked wryly, “What if he wasn’t a terrorist in the first place but we turned him into one by sending him to Gitmo?”

A recent Washington Post cover story asked, “Did Guantanamo turn an accused low-level Taliban fighter into a suicide bomber?” After four years at Gitmo, the “low-level” fighter, Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, drove a truck-full of explosives into an Iraqi army base outside Mosul, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 42 others.

And BBC commentators speculated that harsh treatment of Binyam Mohamed, who returned to London after becoming the first Guantanamo detainee released by President Barack Obama, can be blamed for any terrorist acts he may commit in the future.

According to this view, Gitmo is, as Amnesty International describes it, “the gulag of our time.” In the words of Mr. Ajmi’s attorney, “Guantanamo took a kid … who wasn’t all that bad and turned him into a hostile, hardened individual.”

Given the media attention devoted to cases of alleged detainee abuse — who can forget Newsweek’s Koran-in-the-toilet story? — this theory may seem plausible. But such cases are more notorious than they are numerous. Most of the nearly 800 detainees who have passed through Gitmo since 9-11 have been treated humanely, their religious liberty respected.

In fact, that was the upshot of a recently released Pentagon review, which found that conditions at Guantanamo were in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Holder visited in late February and came away “impressed.” Then there is Mohammed Ismail, who, at a press conference upon his release from Gitmo in 2004, praised his treatment, saying, “They gave me a good time at Cuba.” Ismail was later captured participating in an attack on U.S. forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Media reports of life at Gitmo highlight the extreme accommodation of religious practice. Prison guards go through special sensitivity training. Each Muslim detainee is provided with a Koran, which, in accordance with Muslim teaching, is never touched by non-Muslims (i.e. the prison guards). Each prisoner receives prayer beads, culturally appropriate halal meals, prayer rugs, daily calls to prayer, and each cell contains a stenciled arrow pointing the way to Mecca.

The vast majority of Guantanamo detainees are housed in facilities where they can associate freely with one another. New arrivals are often placed in cells next to radical Islamists, who preach hatred of America and that dying in jihad is the only sure way to eternal salvation. Inmates are urged to memorize the Koran and participate in study groups. Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are appointed as cell block leaders, and the prisons have councils of elders, which issue fatwas to other detainees.

It appears there is plenty of time for terrorist meetings at Gitmo. Recently, five detainees whom the Bush Administration accused of planning the 9/11 attacks proudly admitted their guilt. The New York Times reports that the men filed a document with a U.S. military judge titled, “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” The five described the 9/11 attacks and the murder of 3,000 Americans as a “model” of Islamic action and called the accusations against them “a badge of honor.” The Times said the Islamists wrote the document “at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp.”

Harsh treatment regularly comes from the prisoners themselves. Muslim detainees who decline to submit to radicalization are ostracized. As one Afghan detainee told the Miami Herald, “There were detainees who did not pray or who spoke with female soldiers. We stopped speaking with these men. Sometimes we beat them.” The culture of radicalization is so pervasive at Gitmo that some former U.S. officials have called it the “American madrassa.”

None of this is to say that all prisoners are radicalized at Gitmo. Logic tells us that if someone is imprisoned for terrorist activity and then, upon his release, commits a terrorist act, he probably was predisposed to the deadly action.

This puts us between the rock and the hard place of Obama’s Gitmo policy. He has signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison but has not announced where the approximately 245 remaining detainees will go. Recent Supreme Court decisions make it unlikely they will be tried in U.S. civilian courts, and states with prisons that could house the detainees have made it clear they do not want them.

Many countries are unwilling to take the prisoners, and some that do will commute their sentences. Another possibility would be to incarcerate them at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where more than 600 prisoners have already been detained. But there simply is no option superior to holding the enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

Whatever Obama decides to do, it is likely that some detainees will be released and, after years of radicalization at Gitmo, some may take up arms or suicide belts and join the jihad. If they do, it will be the accommodation, not suppression, of religious freedom at Guantanamo that’s to blame.

The five prisoners describe the 9/11 attacks and the murder of 3,000 Americans as a “model” of Islamic action. They assert that the accusations against them “are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.” The Times reports that this document was written by the Islamists “at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp.”

Really? I have some questions. So, at the prison where we are accused of torturing prisoners, we allow them to meet regularly and consult with each other? What is this, the Islamic Book Club or the Mecca Sewing Club? Now that we have confessions, does President Obama want to revisit his decision to suspend military trials? And, finally, will the confessions now silence the “9/11 truthers,” that bizarre group of fanatics on both political extremes who for eight years have obscenely claimed that we attacked ourselves on 9/11?

Muslim activists in Minneapolis are trying to blame the radicalization on poverty and unemployment. But two missing 19-year olds had been studying medicine and engineering at the University of Minnesota. And, as the Post reports, “…they became antisocial, speaking and eating less as they grew more devout.”

Today’s report is just another reminder of the nature of our Islamofascist enemy. No one worries when a Jew, an evangelical, a Catholic, a Mormon or a Buddhist becomes more “devout.” And while we occasionally hear news about jihadist terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan, we cannot afford to lower our guard when it comes to threats here at home. Unfortunately, there has been disturbing news in recent days suggesting that the Obama Administration intends to cut back on enforcement of our immigration laws. I hope today’s report will force some in government to rethink that view. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with members of Congress who recognize the dangers and who are committed to strengthening our homeland security.

“Words matter in this situation,” Obama said, “because one of the ways we’re going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds.”

Words do matter.  And Obama has spoken a lot of them in the first couple weeks of his presidency about such things as building “mutual interest and mutual respect” with the Muslim world.  But while Obama’s words are intended to reassure Muslims, his actions may be having the opposite effect on those whose security the president is charged first and foremost with protecting — the American people.

A Gallup poll this week found that Obama’s decision “ordering that the Guantanamo Bay prison be closed” is the second least popular decision he’s made thus far. In fact, a majority of the over 1,000 Americans surveyed by Gallup disapproved of the decision.

That share might have been even lower if Gallup had taken its poll after Wednesday, when Obama told NBC:

Can we guarantee that they’re [Gitmo prisoners] not going to try to participate in another attack?  No.  But what I can guarantee is that if we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values … that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like Al Qaeda.

Once again, the president is demonstrating he has no clue about the nature of America’s jihadist enemy.  We know that many former Gitmo detainees indeed have returned to the global jihad upon their release.  We know that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was repatriated to Kuwait in 2005 after three years in Gitmo and subsequently acquitted of terrorism charges by a Kuwaiti court.  He went on to kill seven people in a suicide bombing targeting Iraqi security forces in Mosul.

And this week brought news that a much praised “de-radicalization” program for imprisoned jihadists in Saudi Arabia isn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Saudi Arabia had claimed a perfect record in converting murderous jihadists into upstanding citizens.

Now the Saudi government admits that as many as 10 terrorists who completed the program had gone right back to waging jihad.

In a much-discussed interview with Politico this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney pointed out that 61 former Gitmo inmates have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”  And the 200 or so still there are, according to Cheney, “the hard core, whose recidivism rate would be much higher.”

Obama still hasn’t said what he’ll do with the terror suspects at Gitmo once it’s closed.  But the prospect of them housed at the local penitentiary — where, as Chuck Colson has noted, their murderous ideology often becomes viral — helps explain why most Americans don’t want these thugs transferred here.

Obama speaks of the battle to win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world.  He seems to believe that if America just abided more closely to “our values,” Islamic terrorism would go away.  But “our values” are exactly what our enemy loathes.

While many Muslims simply want peace (proof of which was seen in the successful Iraq elections this week), Obama may find it rather more difficult to win over the Muslims who matter most: those inculcated from birth with the idea that Jews and Christians are sub-human and that death is grander than life.

We have become numb to stories of terrorists who exploit women, children and persons with disabilities by forcing them to become homicide bombers.  But this week, the jihadists put an evil twist on their deplorable acts.  An Iraqi woman is charged with recruiting more than 80 female homicide bombers.  Nothing new there, but get this: the woman, Samira Jassam, confessed to ordering that the girls be raped so that she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

The heart and mind of an enemy animated more by the prospect of our death than by its own survival cannot be won over by soothing words from the Oval Office.

National security issues probably weren’t foremost on Obama’s mind this week.  Instead, he found himself in the middle of another scandal about one of his cabinet appointees.  When former Sen. Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to become Secretary of Health and Human Services after it was discovered he had cheated on his taxes, Obama admitted, “I think I messed up.  I screwed up.”

I appreciate Obama’s candor.  But I hope the mistakes that have plagued his nomination choices do not presage more screw ups on national security matters.  In his interview with Politico, Cheney warned of a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a nuclear or biological attack in the coming years and said the Obama administration’s policies may make it more likely to succeed.

“Words matter,” and so do actions.  If Obama’s actions lead to the obliteration of a U.S. city, the words “I screwed up” won’t be enough.

Sadly, in the opening days of his administration, President Obama appears determined to accomplish something much different: to reassure the Muslim world that we no longer have the resolve to protect ourselves.

Last week, he extended new rights to terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay while authorizing the sentencing to death of innocent children around the world through taxpayer-funded abortion.

Things didn’t improve this week. In his first TV interview as president, with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel, Obama made three assertions that provide insight into our new president’s worldview. It’s not very reassuring.

First, President Obama said he felt his “job” was to communicate “to the Muslim world … that the Americans are not your enemy.” Why does the American president feel compelled to reassure Muslims that Americans are not their enemy? It was the United States that was attacked on 9-11 by jihadists acting in the name of Islam. Our response to that cowardly attack was to send our military not to subjugate Muslims but to liberate millions in Iraq and Afghanistan from the rule of tyrants.

Citizens of both countries were able to vote for the first time in their lives. In Afghanistan today, in areas where the U.S. is in control, Muslim girls are permitted to go to school. Where radical Islamists are in control, acid is thrown in the faces of girls who try to go to school, and their classrooms are blown up.

After the 9-11 attack, we went out of our way to ensure that mosques in the United States were safe from any kind of backlash. American politicians visited mosques and prefaced every statement about the attack by reassuring Muslims that America was not at war with a faith but only with its extreme adherents.

Muslims are arguably treated better in America today than they were before Muslim extremists declared war on us. We have Muslim members of Congress, and we go out of our way to accommodate Islamic religious practices. Taxpayer money is spent around the world to renovate mosques, and the U.S. gives billions in humanitarian assistance and foreign military aid to Muslim countries.

One might think Muslims would be the ones trying to reassure us that they are not our enemy. But I have yet to hear one Muslim leader do so. In fact, throughout the Muslim world, Christians and Jews continue to be persecuted. We hear that the U.S. and Israel are to blame for everything from Islamic nations’ lack of economic development to 9-11 itself.

Every day in the Palestinian territories — on television, in movies and in music — there is a steady diet of incitements against Jews, who are routinely compared to apes and monkeys. Palestinian students are taught that Jews use the blood of kidnapped Muslim children in religious ceremonies.

During his interview, President Obama told his Muslim audience that he had another task: “to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”

Even if the president is right, my first reaction is: So what? Muslims who simply want to enjoy peace and quiet are not the problem. It’s the Muslims who nurture groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and countless other murderous fanatics who have become the subject of investigation.

I met with Indian leaders this week to talk about the problem of Islamic terror in the world’s largest democracy. They told me that extremism is a big problem among the 14 percent of their population that’s Muslim, and the situation is deteriorating

Even if only ten percent of the Muslim world supports these murderers, then our enemy numbers 150 million.

Of course, freedom-loving nations cannot rely on the “international community” for help. As Joseph Loconte reports in The Weekly Standard Online, the United Nations General Assembly recently approved a “defamation of religions” resolution complaining that Islam is “frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” The resolution encourages member states to take legal action against “discrimination, intimidation, and acts of violence in the name of religion.” But, as Loconte notes, the resolution names only Islam and Muslims as “targets of defamation… In a breathtaking omission, the U.N. document makes no mention of the appalling levels of persecution against dissenting Muslims and non-Muslim minorities in much of the Arab world.”

President Obama talks about a new kind of foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy over dictation. But what about the diplomacy of freedom? Like Obama, President Bush routinely reassured Muslims that Americans are not their enemy. But, unlike Obama, he did it by reassuring them that the United States would not abandon them in their struggle for freedom.

Obama also said that America was not born as a colonial power and that he hoped for a restoration of “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” But 30 years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran declared war against the West, a war he initiated by seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking American hostages.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra, Hezbollah militants tortured and killed an American Marine, and the Soviet Union finished pulling out of Afghanistan, a move that allowed the Taliban to entrench itself there.

Perhaps our President wants to take us back to a time of American hostages and fundamentalist coups. Or maybe he’s just a very poor student of history. Either way, it’s not very reassuring.