The port side of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole after it was struck by an Al-Qaeda bomb during an October 2000 refueling operation in the port of Aden in Yemen. (AFP) |
Twenty years ago this week the American guided-missile destroyer USS Cole was bombed and disabled while refuelling in the harbour of the Yemeni port city of Aden by two jihadi suicide bombers sent by Al-Qaeda.
Seventeen American sailors were killed and another 39 were injured as the worldwide jihadi network exhibited its own David vs. Goliath show that ultimately led to the 9/11 attack.
One would have hoped that in the milieu of the 2020 U.S. elections, the anniversary of the USS Cole disaster would trigger some discussion on the country’s national security.
But no. The fly that landed on Vice-President Mike Pence’s head got time and space on CNN and America’s liberal newspapers, but not one word on Al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood, who have a presence both inside and outside the U.S. and inspired the USS Cole attack and 9/11.
The anniversary of the USS Cole disaster has triggered no discussion of U.S. national security.
I do not wish to be the Prophet of Doom, but the dead silence in America on matters that threaten our civilization does cause me to worry. It seems America has learnt little in the decades since the CIA vs. FBI territorial tug of war that let Al-Qaeda hit the Twin Towers.
In 2013, President Obama made a cavalier declaration: “We (have) achieved our central goal ... which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.”
In response, Robert Andrews, special assistant to the secretary of the Army from 2007 to 2009, scoffed at Obama’s bravado in the Washington Post.
Andrews wrote: “That al-Qaeda is a formal organization, one that can be “dismantled,” is a dangerous misconception. It obscures the fact that al-Qaeda is a symptom of ferocious religious beliefs sweeping the Middle East and metastasizing throughout northern Africa. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but bin Ladenism thrives.”
The Atlantic Ocean has provided no defence to the metastasizing of this “ferocious religious beliefs.”
As a Muslim, I can testify to this ferocity even when it is hidden behind the charm of victimhood that wins over the fools who govern the West.
Watching the Senate hearings to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, one could not escape the wily attacks on Barrett’s Catholic faith. As she withstood relentless snipes both inside the Senate and among the mainstream media, I wondered if instead of being Catholic, she converted to Islam, would anyone among the U.S. lawmakers dare to question her faith?
I doubt it and say so because in 2019 the U.S. Congress changed its 181-year ban on wearing head covers and hats in the chambers simply to accommodate the Hijab-wearing congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar.
An orthodox Islamic attire was accommodated in the U.S. Congress without a single word of discussion.
The same American Democrats who have rightly defended a strict separation between religion and state and kept U.S. public schools free of Christian indoctrination now have a different standard when it comes to Islam.
Former U.S. Vice President and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.” |
This is what Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden told a Muslim gathering: “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.”
Biden also promised that if he’s elected in November, he’ll have Muslims in his administration.
But which Muslims, Mr. Biden? Pro-Erdogan Muslims committing atrocities on Kurdish Muslims and endorsing the genocide of Armenians, or Iranian Muslims fighting the Ayatollahs of Iran? The Houthis or the Sunni Yemenis? Pakistani Muslims or the Baloch Muslim exiles from Pakistan-occupied Balochistan?
Are we seeing in the Biden-Harris ticket the slow death of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment which prohibits the U.S. government and its various branches from endorsing, supporting, or becoming too involved in religion and religious activities?
It seems the issue in America is not Roe vs. Wade. It is America vs. Islamism.
Tarek Fatah is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, and a columnist at the Toronto Sun.
