Again, the (Anglican) Vicar of Baghdad: "What We Saw in San Bernardino, Paris Is Beginning of a Third World War" (Updated 12/6)

12/6 Update:  journalist and war historian Michael Lind has written an article for The American Conservative that echoes the proposal concerning the revival of a Citizen Reserve Militia floated by former US Congressman Tom Tancredo, which is linked below.  Although Lind, unlike Tancredo, envisions a militia that is largely unarmed, it's the same basic idea of galvanizing American and European citizens into a hugh, vigilant "neighborhood watch".  I take Lind's reticence to recommend a largely armed militia as a sign of his not wanting to be seen as a "crazy."  To his credit, Tancredo has never worried about that, though it was cost him.  Tancredo believes, rightly, that an unarmed militia is no militia at all.

___________________________________

From Canon White:

On a day after those events in California yesterday, those awful, terrible events, we realize that the destruction of religion is not just over there, [in the Middle East], it's here where you are," White contended. "What we are seeing going on, what we saw in Paris, what we saw yesterday in California, is, as far as I am concerned, the beginning of the third world war. It's unlike any concept of war we may have had before. Society is falling apart. It's not just Iraq that is broken — It is society. - Article here.

Canon White goes on to argue that he is working with Muslims in addtion to Christians and others in the struggle against Islamic terrorism.  To the extent that we can can work together with Muslims in the Middle East and in the West, well and good.  But if it is true that we are on the doorstep of World War III, and I think it's becoming increasingly clear that we are, then additional measures will be called for.  This is especially the case if the nature of this war is as Canon White describes it, and I believe he's right about that as well.  There will be violence in the West, and likely hundreds of thousands of American and European boots on the ground in the Levant.

Over at Chronicles Magazine -- a source that is, in my opinion, a must for any traditional Anglican -- Srdja Trifkovic has outlined what he believes will be necessary measures for the West to take during this coming war:

1. Spying on Muslims is necessary, legal and justified—Let us start with the complex and emotionally charged issue of constitutional rights versus national security. In December 2005 it was disclosed that soon after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency “to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the U.S. to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” The unwillingness of the mainstream media to disclose the exact identity of the NSA eavesdropping subjects was reminiscent of its refusal to disclose the religious identity of tens of thousands of rioters who wreaked havoc in dozens of French suburbs a decade ago. Glossing over the surveillance targets’ identity has implied that that a Muslim who has become a naturalized American citizen is so thoroughly and irrevocably “American,” that no hyphenated designation or qualifier is called for. This fits in with the liberal world view that rejects the notion that faith can be a prime motivating factor in human affairs, or that importing Muslim immigrants may be in any way disadvantageous for the host country’s security. Having reduced religion, politics and art to “narratives” and “metaphors” which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class did its usual thing, calling—most recently—the attackers in Paris last month “French” or “Belgian.”

Our awareness of the many failures of the Bush II presidency should not make us instinctively disinclined to see the legal justification for its conduct. The threat posed by jihad today is different in degree to that faced during the Cold War, but not in kind: it is an existential threat. 24/7 surveillance—at home and abroad—is the right and proper part of that response. The legal and constitutional dilemma, such as whether the U.S. should spy on jihadist-minded “Americans” at home is both false and unnecessary under the circumstances. Radical solutions are needed for radical challenges, and they do exist.

If and when all persons engaged in Islamic activism are excluded from America, there will be no need for such intrusive domestic surveillance. We don’t need any legislation to protect CAIR’s clients’ privacy, we need the law that will treat any naturalized citizen’s or resident alien’s known or suspected adherence to an Islamic world outlook as excludable – on political, rather than “religious” grounds.

2. Refuse/Rescind Citizenship to Islamic Activists—All Americans—real Americans, that is, and not those who falsely take the oath of citizenship but continue to preach jihad and Sharia—will be spared the worry of state intrusion if Islamic activism is treated as grounds for the loss of acquired U.S. citizenship and deportation. The citizenship of any naturalized American who preaches jihad, inequality of “infidels” and women, the establishment of the Shari’a law etc., should be revoked, and that person promptly deported to the country of origin.

A foreigner who becomes naturalized (myself included) has to declare, on oath, “that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.” (In acknowledgement whereof I have hereunto affixed my signature.)

This is a legally binding document. For a Muslim to declare all of the above in good faith, and especially that he accepts the Constitution of the United States as the source of his highest loyalty, is an act of apostasy par excellence, punishable by death under the Islamic law. The sharia, to a Muslim, is not an addition to the “secular” legal code with which it coexists with “the Constitution and laws of the United States of America”; it is the only true code, the only basis of obligation. To be legitimate, all political power therefore must rest exclusively with those who enjoy Allah’s authority on the basis of his revealed will. America, to a believing Muslim, is inherently illegitimate.

So how can a self-avowedly devout Muslim take the oath, and expect the rest of us to believe that it was done in good faith? Because he is practicing taqiyya, the art of dissimulation that was inaugurated by Muhammad to help destabilize and undermine non-Muslim communities ripe for a touch of Jihad. Or else because he is not devout enough and confused, but in that case there is the ever-present danger that at some point he will rediscover his roots, with predictably unpleasant consequences for the rest of us. This is exactly what happened with the slaughter in California.

3. Reintroduce “Profiling”—In June 2003 the government ordered a ban on “racial and ethnic profiling” at all 70 federal law enforcement agencies. It has been upheld ever since. Guidelines issued by the Justice Department directly impacted some 120,000 law enforcement officers at the FBI, the DEA, Homeland Security Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Coast Guard and other agencies. The guidelines said that authorities may subject certain groups to greater scrutiny if there is “specific information” that such people are preparing to mount a terrorist attack. Specifically, Middle Eastern men might draw greater attention at airports, but only if the government discovered a plot to mount an attack.

These rules place front-line defenders of America in a quandary. They are discretely violated by law enforcement officers, especially at passport and customs checkpoints, who care about doing their jobs well more than doing them “right.” Ahmed Ressam was stopped in December 1999 by a Customs Service agent as he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada, even though the agent had no specific information giving him cause to suspect the traveler—prima facie, a classic case of profiling, of bad and even illegal policing worthy of moral condemnation and bureaucratic censure. It turned out that Ressam was a terrorist with over a hundred pounds of powerful explosives in his car trunk, explosives meant to blow up the Los Angeles International Airport.

The aversion to “profiling” is a symptom, minor but telling, of the contemporary Western pathology. Law-enforcers in other parts of the world pay no heed to the dictates of “sensitivity” and anti-discriminationism. Arabs profile other Arabs, Indians profile Pakistanis, Japanese profile Chinese and Koreans, and everyone profiles Africans (unless they are invading Europe). Israel, democratic and friendly to America, profiles everyone entering and exiting all the time, and makes no qualms about it.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but for some decades now all terrorists of concern to America’s national security and to the quality of life of its citizens have been Muslims. Two percent of practicing Muslims living in the United States were responsible for over 95 percent of terrorist offenses and serious threats in the country since 9-11. A young Muslim man is literally hundreds of thousands of times more likely to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States than an Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, or a Buddhist. Or for that matter a Lebanese Christian. Membership of a group is a valid pointer in assuming and judging unobserved behavioral characteristics of an individual, especially in the absence of specific information about that individual’s background. To suggest otherwise is neither moral nor sane.

Profiling is not “good” or “bad” policing, it is just policing. It is necessary and it should be perfectly legal: there is nothing in the Constitution to suggest otherwise. It is time to accept that “profiling” based on a person’s appearance, origin, and apparent or suspected beliefs is an essential tool of trade of law enforcement and war on terrorism.

4. No Security Clearances for Muslims—A person’s Islamic faith and outlook is incompatible with the requirements of personal commitment, patriotic loyalty and unquestionable reliability that are essential in the military, law enforcement, intelligence services, and other related branches of government. For as long as practicing Muslims are able to get security clearances, terrorist organizations will continue trying to insinuate their supporters into the hiring pools of American security agencies. Any presence of practicing Muslims in any such institution would present an inherent risk to its integrity and undermine its morale. Examples abounds, such as the Ft. Hood massacre.

Parallel with the removal of Muslims from all positions requiring security clearance, it will be necessary to use religious profiling in recruiting replacements. Lebanese and other Middle Eastern Christians should provide a large pool of qualified candidates with excellent linguistic skills and cultural assets essential to the task. Wherever they went, Lebanese Christians have assimilated and become valuable and respected members of their host communities. Their former neighbors, the ethnically and physically almost indistinguishable Lebanese Muslims, have not.

5. Re-haul Immigration Laws and Procedures—The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report says, “better technology and training to detect terrorist travel documents are the most important immediate steps to reduce America’s vulnerability to clandestine entry,” which is incorrect. Better technology is certainly needed, but “the most important immediate steps” demand controlling the borders. No counter-terrorist strategy is possible without complete physical control of the homeland’s boundaries. Illegal immigration from Islamic nations is a major terrorist threat that can and should be eliminated. Cooperation of state and local law-enforcement agencies at all levels in apprehending illegal immigrants and assisting in their deportation, focusing on those from nations and groups at risk for Islamic terrorism, should be made mandatory. State and local law-enforcement agencies should not be subjected to a single command and control center, but they need to cooperate in enforcing the law and protecting national security.

New immigration legislation is badly needed, and it should include laws to exclude all persons engaged in Islamic activism from America. Such activism should be defined as the political act of propagating, disseminating or otherwise supporting “Jihad” (in its primary sense of divinely sanctioned war against non-Muslims), discrimination against Christians, Jews and other “infidels,” discrimination and violence against women and sexual minorities, anti-Jewish bigotry, sanction of slavery, poll tax, etc. Islam’s violent manifestations and discriminatory message are inseparable, and adequate safeguards against the adherents of that message should be put in place. The proposed definition of Islamic activism would be a major step in the direction of denying actual or potential terrorists a foothold on American shores.

New legislation should treat a resident alien’s or prospective visitor’s known or suspected adherence to an Islamic world outlook or affiliation with the propagators of Jihad, sharia, etc. as excludable—excludable, let us re-emphasize, on political, rather than “religious” grounds. The broad model is provided by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA, the McCarran-Walter Act). Senator McCarran’s and Congressman Francis Walter’s provisions aimed at curtailing subversion were well devised and they have been unjustly demonized in recent decades. They allowed the exclusion or deportation of any alien who engaged or had the purpose to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or subversive to national security.

Islamic activism should be treated as the grounds for the exclusion or deportation of any alien, regardless of his status or ties in the United States, because such activism is inherently prejudicial to the public interest and injurious to national security. Useful precedents exist. Keeping out and facilitating the expulsion of politically undesirable foreigners has been at the heart of this country’s immigration legislation since 1903 when Congress barred the admission of anarchists in response to President McKinley’s assassination. “Ideological” grounds for deportation were on the statute books until 1990, when they were repealed by Congress. After the Russian revolution foreign communists were singled out for deportation. One night alone in January of 1920, more than 2,500 “alien radicals” were seized in thirty-three cities across the country and deported to their countries of origin. Those who preach Jihad and Sharia can and should be treated in exactly the same manner.

It is possible that the “affiliation” in this clause will affect a number of people who do not actively identify with all of the goals and methods of the Jihadist core. That may be unfortunate but it is inevitable. Personal assurances by individuals thus affected cannot be taken at face value: Islam not only allows, but mandates lying to “infidels” in order to gain political or any other advantage (i.e. Taqiyya, the concealment of one’s Islamic beliefs to non-Muslims). The problem is well known to INS officials: attitudes of Muslims who apply for U.S. visas or asylum often change once their status in America is secure. In addition, even “lapsed” Muslims are at permanent risk of going back to their roots, as many Western-born youths are doing.

6. Supervise Mosques and Islamic Centers—All mosques, Islamic centers and their individual members should be obliged to register with the Attorney General. They need to be subjected to legal limitations and security supervision that applies to cults prone to violence and “hate groups.” The acceptance of proposed measures would lead to a swift and irreversible reduction in the number of mosques and Islamic centers in the United States. The remnant would have to be registered with the Attorney General and subjected to legal limitations and security supervision that applies to cults prone to violence and “hate groups.” All over the Western world Islamic centers have provided platforms for exhortations to the faithful to support causes and to engage in acts that are morally reprehensible, illegal, and detrimental to the host country’s national security. Their message is seditious, incompatible with the the U.S. Constitution and with common decency. Subjecting them to the relentless supervision by every government agency needed for the task, and doing it right now, is both necessary and justified. - Defeating Domestic Jihad: A Program of Action

Former U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo has also recently floated the idea of reviving the Citizens Reserve Militia, a proposal David Kopel and I mentioned in our 1997 Marlyland Law Review article, Communitarians, Neorepublicans, and Guns: Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibition. Many people will howl at this proposal, but it is not as crazy as it may seem.    Here is how Tancredo sets forth why we need to revice this old American institution and how it would be structured:

Consider the dire condition of our law enforcement capabilities.

• The FBI is not given the resources to do its job in preventing radical Islamists from acting on their plans. Stopping nine out of ten plots probably means a hundred mass killings not blocked.
• The CIA and other intelligence agencies issue warnings that are ignored by our leaders—it doesn’t fit the head-in-the-sand political narrative.
• The Republican-controlled Congress refuses to halt the flow of refugees from regions known to be infused with radical Islamists.
• Our LEGAL immigration and asylum policies allow a half-million Muslims into the country each year.
• The local police are great but are 5-to-10 minutes away after a 911 call.

We can wait to fix all of those obstacles to self-defense through the political process, or we can act while we work on those fixes. We can act to defend ourselves by arming ourselves. If attacked, do you call 911 and wait for police to arrive, or do you take the bastards down?

In San Bernardino, the police arrived in 4 minutes of the first shots, and still 14 people were slaughtered. Next time it could be 140 or 400.

In San Bernardino, the assassins were two “self-radicalized” Islamist jihadists, one of them an American-born Muslim of Pakistani immigrant parents. The mastermind of the Paris attack of last month was not a refugee, he was a French citizen born to Moroccan immigrants. The female half of that pair of assassins had been “vetted” by two federal agencies and awarded a visa.

It’s time to wake up and smell the ashes of self-delusion.

In response to radical Islam’s declaration of war on America, Barack Obama plays golf and Hillary Clinton wants to have a “national conversation” about gun confiscation. Let’s hope she continues with such vapid stupidities, as it will be a fitting final chapter to her political biography.

If President Obama or any president ever attempts gun confiscation in America, there should be and will be a second civil war. An America disarmed is an America in subjugation.

But there are things government can do — if citizens will demand it. In the absence of statesmanship and leadership from above, it’s time for states and communities to act in their own self-defense.

• Without any action by Congress, under the Tenth Amendment states and local governments can organize local reserve militias, a properly trained and deputized battalion of local citizens who serve as backup to local law enforcement.
• Reserve militia members will be sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect communities from violent assaults from any quarter.
• States and communities can also declare an end to so-called “gun free zones,” which are nothing but suicide pacts formed by delusional escapists.
• States and communities can allow and indeed encourage more private citizens to obtain concealed carry permits and arm themselves. - Tancredo: Organize State, Local Militias to Defend Against Radical Islamist Assaults

Christian men, it's time to "gun up" if you haven't already.  We should all be prayer warriors, yes.  We should be proclaiming the sovereignty of God is these terrible times, yes.  And yes, we should work to evangelize Muslims.  But eschatological hand-wringing, spiritual platitudes and a desire to win Muslims for Christ are not enough.  The Crusades are back, and we must fight again.  It us not our doing that has led to this, any more than the original Crusades were the doing of Christians in those days.  Islamic imperialism has forced us into the war.