Steve Emerson, noted author, commentator, and the founder of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, testified Wednesday before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. How can we conduct an effective national defense when all of the leading agencies responsible for that refuse to learn who the enemy is?
The U.S. government generally, and the State Department in particular, needs to seek out genuine moderates in the Arab and Muslim world. What we have done instead is simply embrace and promote those who claim to speak for all Muslims, but parrot the themes of anti-Americanism, victimology and grievances that seek to place the blame for all the world’s ills on U.S. foreign policy.
Arab and Muslim voices which promote accountability, democracy, human rights and freedoms must be elevated and embraced. Short of that, organizations, individuals and institutions in the Muslim world that are reflexively anti-American and pro-terrorist, or, at minimum, apologists for terrorism, should be denounced and avoided. All organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood need to be treated for what they are: fascistic, paternalistic organizations that seek the return of the Caliphate.
Congress should require the lead agencies and departments in the Global War on Terrorism (most notably the FBI, CIA, and DHS) to fully and formally educate all counterterrorism personnel in the proclaimed Islamist ideology of al Qaeda the global Islamist movement. This ideology is easily accessible in Islamic religious texts and treatises such as Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones. This has not been instituted at any agency.
More than six years after 9/11, this is inexcusable