Here is all Republicans need to do to ensure the 2012 election is another successful one for them: Get Americans to watch last week’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the threat of Islamist radicalization in the American Muslim community.
What Americans will see is a relatively serious Republican Party investigating what any sentient being – and many non-sentient beings – know is a problem, which is the threat of Islamist radicalization. And they will see Republicans doing so without demonizing Muslims more broadly.
What Americans will also see is a completely unserious, comically preposterous Democratic Party acting as if Islamist radicalization is not a serious threat — or just as great a threat in our current age as Jewish and Quaker extremism. To believe that, of course, you have to be willfully ignorant or worse.
If you cannot recognize Islamist terrorism as a unique threat in our post-9/11 world, then perhaps you shouldn’t have a role in governing America and you especially shouldn’t have a seat on the House Homeland Security Committee. Instead of asking relevant questions during the hearing, Homeland Security Committee Democrats demanded investigations into the KKK, derided the expertise of the superb and levelheaded witnesses and went on a few crazy-eyed rants.
Radical Islamist terror is not the equivalent of other potential lone-wolf, one-off attacks that threaten the American homeland from fringe actors. Islamists have declared war on America and want to destroy it, but perhaps it is unfair that I expect Democratic lawmakers to have read the words of an obscure Arab philosopher named Osama bin Laden. To fill the House Homeland Security Democrats in, international jihadists are seeking weapons of mass destruction to commit mass casualty events, attacks that would make 9/11 look minuscule by comparison – and it simply makes sense that they would, as they already have had some success in doing, seek out sympathetic and vulnerable elements of the American Muslim community to radicalize along the way.
Considering reading bin Laden’s words seem a bit too burdensome, I imagine there is little chance that House Democrats have heard of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim now hiding out in Yemen and radicalizing American Muslims to commit terrorist attacks – Nidal Hassan, the Muslim Army officer who murdered fellow American soldiers at Ft. Hood, was one of his frequent correspondents.
Call me a fear-mongerer, but the threat of Islamist radicalization seems to me to be a legitimate area of congressional investigation. In fact, how irresponsible would it be if Congress did not look into the threat of American Islamist radicalization?
Indeed, two of the witnesses at the hearings had witnessed their relatives become radicalized. It is important for us to understand why this happens so we can try to prevent it. Most Americans — Republicans as well as Democrats — know this. The only people who don’t are the Democrats in Congress and their most lunatic supporters.
So, America, I introduce to you the “Blind, Deaf and Dumb” Democrats. This group is staunchly and unwaveringly committed to keeping their heads stuck in the sand and making sure that no one, anywhere, is ever offended.
But this commitment to being blind, deaf and dumb isn’t limited to Islamist radicalization. It has been on ample display in the fiscal arena as well.
America has a fiscal crisis? No way! All we need to do is spend more — or, if you prefer, invest. If we do make some minor cuts for show, they definitely shouldn’t be to critical programs like the Brokeback Mountain Poetry Festival.
Social Security is going bankrupt? As if! The trust fund will be solvent through 2037 — in theory. As Lloyd Christmas told us in “Dumb and Dumber,” IOUs are as good as money, right?
Medicaid and Medicare have to be radically altered? Not a chance! Everything is fine on the Titanic. No icebergs ahead.
America has serious problems for which immediate or near-immediate action is required. While much is to be desired of many Republicans, too many Democrats in Congress have proved they are completely and totally unserious, not even willing to recognize the most obvious threats to America’s security and primacy. We’ll see how that plays with the public in 2012. In the meantime, let’s get some more hearings on Islamist radicalization on the calendar.