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Islamic jihadists remain the most serious threat to America, despite President Barack Obama’s effort to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
Unfortunately, Islamic radicals will not reciprocate the president’s attempted outreach.
Earlier this year the president spoke in Cairo to promote better relations with the Islamic world, but the primary problem is hostility of organized Islam to members of other faiths.
Now the administration has created a new technology fund for Islamic countries.
The Overseas Private Investment Corp. provides up to $150 million to facilitate private sector investments. Target industries include computers and telecommunications. The objective is to promote education, health care, infrastructure and jobs in the Muslim world.
With more than six jobless workers changing every opening, shouldn’t Washington focus on promoting education, health care, infrastructure and jobs in America?
The Detroit Free Press reports Nov. 15 that seven months into the staggering $787 billion federal stimulus program, “The vast majority of government grants, contracts and loans in Michigan so far have created or retained virtually no jobs.”
Less than 700 awards received some money. Nearly half of those – 327 – created one job or less, at a cost per job of $2.7 million.
The 17,600 vehicles Obama ordered from General Motors, Chrysler and Ford in April “didn’t retain or keep a single job,” the Free Press reported.
Michigan has 2.2 million citizens receiving some sort of public assistance, so while the rest of us slog on and try to survive, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase and Co.’s investment bank, the three biggest banks to exit TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, are back to what they do best, handing out $29.7 billion in bonuses this year, up 60 percent from last year and more than the previous high of $26.8 billion in 2007, Bloomberg News reports.
The U.S. deficit in Fiscal Year 2009 stood at $1.4 trillion.
Uncle Sam will be running up at least another $10 trillion in red ink over the coming decade.
So why is the federal government borrowing money to subsidize education, health care, infrastructure and jobs in other nations? U.S. officials want to believe these initiatives will promote economic growth in Islamic countries, thereby reducing radicalism.
Unfortunately, the record of foreign aid is one of failure. Washington has been exporting money to Third World countries for decades, with little result.
The OPIC initiative is not likely to do anything other than enrich already well-connected politicians and businessmen.
Some may be people who have been funding Islamic radicals for years. Much of the money for terrorism comes from individuals, businesses and charities in supposedly friendly Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia.
The Obama administration apparently believes the problem of Islamic terrorism is one of underdevelopment in Muslim nations. Maybe more jobs would make a few angry young men less likely to turn to violence.
Yet 9/11 terrorists were well-off, not poor. Osama bin Laden was a millionaire businessman.
The U.S. cannot buy friendship of Islamic nations.
Washington should seek good relations with other governments, including Islamic ones, but it should not lose sight of the basic threat to America: fundamentalist Islamic doctrines which view non-Muslims as the enemy. No amount of foreign aid will turn America’s adversaries into friends.
There are 3,500 declared Muslims in the U.S. military.
One, Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, an Army psychiatrist of Palestinian ancestry, was apparently a terrorist. The Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications with a radical imam overseas.
Communications were gathered beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.
Sounds like opportunities were missed to head off the Nov. 5 massacre in which 13 died and 29 were wounded. Scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in the near future, the gunman shouts “Allahu akbar” (God is great in Arabic) as he opens fire.
The London Telegraph reports that during a medical lecture Hazan gave an hour-long briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that non-believers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire.
That would seem a pretty large red flag, yet afterward, there was even an insistence he was afflicted with post-traumatic stress syndrome, though he is yet to see combat.
President Obama Nov. 12 orders a review to determine if the government fumbled warning signs before Hasan jumped on a table with two handguns and demonstrated how lax security is at Fort Hood.
Federal prosecutors take steps Nov. 12 to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a non-profit Muslim organization suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
In what could prove one of the largest counter-terrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors file a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets, including bank accounts and Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 aces in Virginia and the 36-story glass office tower in New York.
27: Percent of Americans who don’t have any credit cards.
That’s more than the 21 percent who smoke – up for the first time in almost 15 years.
John Eby is Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby @leaderpub.com.
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And now, the Obama administration has chosen to highlight the American justice system by trying Kahlid Sheik Mohammed and several other detainees at Guantanamo Bay in the Southern District Federal Court in New York City, rather in military tribunals or some other form of justice. First, none of these ENEMY COMBATANTS were Mirandized. They were captured in foriegn nations and put into indefinite captivity on and American military base. There were ostensibly “tortured” or treated roughly by their captors in order to extract valued information. Who among us believes that those two issues alone, would not be ample reason to have their charges dismissed? They simply were not afforded the same rights that any other American would be. But wait, they are not Americans, did not commit a “crime,” but an act of war, and have not yet set foot on American soil. To be sure though, KSM is an American educated engineer. Granting these individuals civil rights, as granted under our constitution is wrong. If anyone is in doubt, read Andrew McCarthy’s book, Willful Blindness, about the capture, trials and incarceration of the Blind Shiek, and his accomplices in the first World Trade Center bombing. We are at war. We have been at war for more than a decade, against an enemy who, given the chance will strike again, in manners more horrific than Maj. Hassan, yet the liberal media and the White House is treating this as a simple matter of stress. They, and many Americans are again being “Willfully Blind.”
to be an “ENEMY COMBATANTS ” means one must be in fact an “ENEMY COMBATANTS ” these are tried in a military court and under the rule of such Courts.
If there is no proof one is in fact an “ENEMY COMBATANTS ”
these are tried in Civilian Courts for Crimes against America.
and are subject to the rules of such Civilian Courts.
we extend these rights , and Obligations to Citizens, and non
citizens equaly.
Alliens both Leagal and Ilegal are under such rights and Obligations equaly, as this is the standard of justice.
WE CANNOT TREAT “NONENEMY COMBATANTS ”
as “ENEMY COMBATANTS”
Mike,
Your Hero’s Dick &George developed the title and Protocal for
what is known as an “ENEMY COMBATANTS”
by those protacols KSM and Assama Bin Laden do
not fit the term “ENEMY COMBATANTS”.
So the present administration has no choice but to try them
in a Non Military tribunal,the Civil Justice system iregardless
of Your opinions.