Should the U.S. Attempt to Limit Entry by Radicalized Muslims?

On Saturday, Jan. 31, The Dispatch ran an Associated Press piece, headlined, “French fracture laid bare as 8-year-old boy praises terrorists:”

“In early January ... three Frenchmen with links to Islamic extremists went on their murderous rampage, killing journalists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. ...

“More French (residents) have embarked on jihad in Syria and Iraq that in any other European country -- over 10,000. Dozens of these fighters have returned, feeding fears that they could turn their battle skills on France.

“The minute of silence for victims (of the Charlie Hebdo massacre) ... was not respected by all students. Some children contested it; others walked out. ... An 8-year-old Muslim boy proclaimed, “I am with the terrorists.”

If radicalized Muslim immigrants are siding with the terrorists and against France, a Western democracy that admitted them to afford them a better life, why is there any reason to believe that at least some radicalized Muslim immigrants to the U.S. won’t side with the terrorists?

Rephrasing the questions, how many radicalized Muslim terrorists should be allowed to reside in the United States? How many radicalized Muslim suicide bombers? How many Islamists who believe the country should be governed by Sharia Law, rather than our Constitution, should we admit annually (and how would you determine whether a particular immigrant poses such a threat)?

According to a Pew Report, since 2006 about 100,000 Muslims enter the U.S. each year.

Wikipedia notes, “A 2013 Pew Research Center poll asked Muslims around the world whether attacks on civilians were justified. Globally 72 percent of Muslims said violence against civilians is never justified, and in the US, 81 percent of Muslims opposed such violence. About 14 percent of Muslims in the nations surveyed (and 8 percent of Muslims in the U.S.) said violence against civilians is ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ justified.”

It is estimated that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Fourteen percent of 1.6 billion means there could be 224 million Muslims in the world who believe “violence against civilians is ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ justified.”

But if 100,000 Muslims are entering the U.S. each year, and if 8 percent of those believe “violence against civilians is ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ justified,” how, short of barring entry to all Muslims, do we keep that 8 percent out? And how do we insure that their children will not be radicalized as were  Boston Marathon suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers and the 8-year-old French boy?

The 2013 Pew Report indicates that throughout the Muslim world, terror and the murder of innocent civilians is deemed “justifiable” to 224 million Muslims. Consider three stories that have appeared in The Dispatch over the last few weeks:

Two French Muslims killed 13 French journalists employed at Charlie Hebdo. Why? That satirical magazine published an unflattering cartoon about Muhammad. A third Muslim, one of their associates, killed four civilians in a Jewish grocery store. Why a Jewish store?

According to Amnesty International, as many as 2,000 women, children and elderly people were murdered  in the Nigerian town of Baga by the militant Muslim Boko Haram militia.

On Dec. 16, 2014, Taliban gunmen attacked a military-run school and killed 141 people -- almost all of them students,  innocent children. The murders were so barbaric even Taliban militants in neighboring Afghanistan decried the killing spree, calling it “un-Islamic.”

I don’t mean to imply or suggest that all Muslims who enter our country are terrorists, suicide bombers, or Sharia Law proponents. They aren’t. But the 9/11 terrorist murders, and the Boston Marathon murders conclusively demonstrate that at least 21 Muslim “immigrants” were terrorist murderers.

And while the great majority of Muslims coming to America are peaceful, decent people looking for a better life, how many al-Qaida, Taliban or ISIS adherents are slipping in among them?

So, I refer to the questions I asked in the opening paragraph.

If one in 100 Muslims admitted into the U.S. is a terrorist or a suicide bomber, or a Sharia Law proponent, is it in the best interest of the American people to admit that 100?

If only one in a 1,000 turns out to be a suicide bomber is that risk worthwhile? How about if one in 10,000? One in 100,000?

I raise these politically incorrect questions because Reuters reported last May 22nd,  “The Justice Department has tapped a veteran prosecutor to probe the flow of foreign fighters, including Americans, who are joining Syria’s rebels. Our government is concerned with the danger of these radicalized militants returning home.” (reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-usa-syria-foreigners-idUSBREA4L0UC20140522)

The fear is that when they are done fighting in Syria, they will return to the U.S. to kill here -- just as many have done in France. If this government and this Justice Department have concerns, every American should have like concerns. And while the president is “ending” America’s war on radical Muslim terrorists,  I see no evidence to date terrorists are ending their war against America -- or anybody else who disagrees with them.

So at least two questions remain.

-- How does America keep Islamic terrorists from slipping in while admitting peaceful Muslims immigrants? And

-- If 8 percent of Muslims immigrants admitted to America, and/or 8 percent  of the children of peaceful Muslims admitted to America are going to take up the cause of radical Islam or demand Sharia Law for America, is it wise to admit even their peaceful parents?


Posted: Saturday, February 21, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea
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Obama Must be Churchill, not Chamberlain

Iran is playing “Hitler.” Who is in the White House? Chamberlain or Churchill?

When it comes to foreign policy, it appears that it is amateur hour in the White House.

President Obama appears to be an ideologue, with immutable opinions -- opinions that take no account of existing facts. He is like the television weatherman who tells us, “It will be partly cloudy and sunny for the rest of the afternoon,” while at that very time, hail is pouring down outside his TV studio -- he has his teleprompter, and can’t bother to look out the window!

In case you haven’t noticed, the Muslim world is in utter chaos.

While President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry continue to dither (“negotiate with Iran”) over its efforts to build a nuclear bomb, Iran has built an 88.5 foot ballistic missile, which is sitting on a launch pad just outside Tehran. According to the Jerusalem Post, “The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States. The reason why is obvious, if even without a nuclear bomb, Iran possesses chemical and biological weapons.

In addition, in March, the Iranian defense ministry ceremoniously displayed eight new anti-ship ballistic missiles, known as the Khalij Fars. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, these weapons have the capacity to hone in on a ship’s infrared signature, which means that it can change direction while in flight to more accurately pursue a moving target up to 190 miles away.

In June, 2014, Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told a congressional subcommittee the  Khalij Fars “is capable of threatening maritime activity throughout the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”

In Lebanon, Iran provides Hezbollah with financial aid, training, weapons, and explosives from Iran. In November 2013, Israeli security officials learned that Hezbollah had close to 200 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles, including those that can track movement from high altitude and “kamikazes” that can avoid capture by radar and fire or drop munitions from low altitudes. In a rare televised appearance on Nov. 4. 2014, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned of a third Lebanon war and stated that Israel should close “all of your airports and your ports” in the event of one.  Nasrallah threatened Israel and claimed that “there is no place on the land of occupied Palestine that the resistance’s rockets cannot reach.” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbollah.html)

And now, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, forcing the pro-American President to resign. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer writes, “While Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb has provoked a major clash between the White House and Congress, Iran’s march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked -- In Washington, that is. The Arabs have noticed. And the pro-American ones, the Gulf Arabs in particular, are deeply worried.”

Recently, the pro-American King of Saudi Arabia died. His successor will find his Saudi Arabia (Sunni) surrounded by Shiites, loyal to Iran: Yemen to the south, Iran to the East and Syria (pro Iranian) to the North. And worse, an unreliable ally in the White House. An American president who believes that America should “lead from behind” (to wit, Libya). A president who draws “red lines,” only to later ignore them.

Regardless what you think of Mr. Obama’s predecessor in office, one thing was clear to Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia: America was their ally, and America would go to war to protect them. The first President Bush demonstrated that when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait.

Now pro-Iranian Shiites have seized Yemen. Will Mr. Obama intervene as President Bush did, or will he be content to “deplore?”

If he fails to intervene, in the short term, he will destroy all belief that America is a reliable ally in the capitals of Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf States. In the longer run, I am afraid it will lead to the worst war the world has ever seen in the Middle East.

I say this, because I don’t think Israel is going to wait until Iran is so powerful that Israel has no chance of winning. Right now Saudi Arabia is doing the best it can: It is seeking to put off the war by depressing the price of oil to deprive Iran of oil money it would otherwise have to finance its military build-up.

I have quoted Winston Churchill before. It is even more applicable today.

“The duty (of the ministers of state) is first so to deal with other nations as to avoid strife and and war and to eschew aggression in all its forms, whether for nationalistic or ideological objects.

“But the safety of the State, the lives and freedom of their fellow countrymen ... make it right and imperative in the last resort, or when a final and definite conviction has been reached, that the use of force should not be excluded.

“If the circumstances are such as to warrant it, force may be used.

“And if this be so, it should be used under the conditions which are most favorable. There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win ....

“For the French Government to leave her faithful ally, Czechoslovakia, to her fate was a melancholy lapse from which flowed terrible consequence.”

If war is coming, and I think it is, I would rather fight Iran now when it is without nuclear weapons and a fully tested, fully operational ICBM. Mr. Obama has a fateful choice:

He can be Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill.

Iran, like Hitler, is advancing one step at a time, and is playing for keeps.



Posted: Saturday, February 7, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea

Inflate-gate Insipidity Passed off as News

Long ago, I quit watching the evening news on NBC, ABC and CBS. Here’s why.

On Jan. 22, there were at least four major world news stories breaking -- news that adversely affects the security of America and our key allies.

Shiite rebels in Yemen -- backed by Iran -- were holding Yemen’s President Hadi captive in his home. Hadi had been a key American ally in our efforts to destroy the al-Qaida fighters in Yemen.

Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram in Nigeria told the world in a YouTube video that the murder of 2000 women, children and elderly in the Nigerian town of Baga was “nothing compared to future attacks” that he was planning, and justified Boko Haram’s mass murder saying God commanded the massacre!

 The Islamic State vowed to kill two Japanese hostages unless a $200 million ransom was paid within 72 hours.

Then at 5 p.m. (EST) on Jan. 22, King Abdullah, King of Saudi Arabia, died. In President Obama’s words, “As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond.” His death comes at a time when the Saudi state finds itself surrounded by enemies: Iran to the East, The Islamic State to the North and now Yemen to the south.

So, on Jan. 22, 2015 what was the lead story on the three major networks? What did NBC, CBS and ABC choose as their most important news items of the day?

What item did NBC run for the first three minutes and 45 second of its “Nightly News”?
To what story did CBS devote the first two minutes forty-five seconds of its “Evening News?”
And what story did ABC deem worthy of approximately four minutes and forty seconds of coverage on its “World News?”

Inflate-gate! (profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/01/22/deflategate-leads-all-three-network-newscasts/)

-- NBC Nightly News:  “On our broadcast tonight, full denial from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and from his coach, as a football inflation scandal remains bigger than the upcoming Super Bowl, as the question remains: Who or what was responsible?”

-- CBS Evening News: “Tonight, caught in a pressure cooker: Is Tom Brady a cheater? Quarterback Tom Brady responds to reports that the Patriots used deflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game.”

-- ABC World News Tonight: “On this Thursday night, the breaking news, the scandal before the Super Bowl. The star quarterback, Tom Brady, answering the question: Are you a cheater? Tonight, how Brady explains those deflated footballs, who handled them after they were handled by the refs, and what now for the football star with the supermodel wife?”

Was Inflate-gate really the day’s most important story? I fully understand that NFL rules require that game balls be inflated to between 12.5 and 13.5 PSI.

But is the fact that 11 footballs were under-inflated by 2 psi each, more important for the American people than the stories itemized above?

For starters, is anybody really claiming New England beat Indianapolis because balls were under-inflated?

The Patriots won the stupid game 45-7! Was it under-inflated balls that made it possible for Legatee Blount to run through the Colts for 145 yards? Or was it superior blocking, or inferior tackling?
Then again, if the idea of under-inflating a football is to make it easier to grip, what’s the big deal?

In wet weather the refs wipe the ball off and cover it with a towel to make it easier to grip. They bring dry balls into the game!

Quarterbacks use hand-warmers to warm their hands.

At least six quarterbacks -- not to mention almost all the wide receivers -- use special tacky gloves. Indeed Nike advertises their gloves as “Magnigrip CL palms with Nike graphics for superior tack and grip in all conditions.” Superior tack means they are sticky.

So, at a time when the whole Middle East is blowing up, and at a time when the sundry Muslim factions are murdering anyone who dares to disagree with their faction’s, views, why are the major networks -- and even Fox! -- wasting air time with Inflate-gate?

To borrow a phrase from our illustrious erstwhile  Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, “What difference does it make?”

Of course, if a properly inflated football really is a significant matter of world  news, why can’t each team select 12 balls of their choice (as is presently being done), give them to the refs, and then have the refs randomly put the balls in play without reference to whom supplied them?

That way if there is a significant  advantage to using an under-inflated ball, there will be a 50-50 chance that that advantage might acrue to the other team.

And maybe the networks will focus on real news.

Posted: Sunday, February 1, 2015 12:10 am - Quad-Cities Online
By John Donald O'Shea


Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea