March 27, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of Number Inflation
This piece by Deanne Stillman on the guy who tossed grenades into his commanders tents is a little -- ahem -- overconfident:
The episode is unsettling for a number of reasons, most of all because it exposes a fact about our military that commanders have tried their best to ignore: the presence of radical, anti-American Muslims in the ranks. Akbar, a convert to Islam, reportedly said when he was captured: "You guys are coming into our countries and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." It's increasingly clear that there is a small group of soldiers for whom anti-American fatwas issued in mosques around the world supercede the oath of loyalty they took to their nation.
Say what? So far it's clear that there's one, and he's in the stockade.
It's certainly disturbing, if an American born muslim is identifying himself with Saddaam Hussein. But to generalize from there to a secret cabal of muslims in the military poised for terrorist action is more than a little bit of a stretch.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 27, 2003 5:04 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksDoesn't the DC sniper, John Allen Muhammad, make two? (Granted, he's no longer in the military.)
Eugene Volokh has a take on this issue.
Jim
Bravo Jane. We all need to shoot down these extrapolations as soon as they appear.
I'm certainly willing to see them (Akbar and Muhammad) as abberations. On the other hand, if the U.S Islamic community starts reacting to the prosecution (and probable execution) of both men as if the government is persecuting Muslims in general rather than dealing with the vilest form of criminals, then I predict there will be a backlash against them for their foolishness, though I pray that I am wrong.
Anyone know if he is a Sunni, Shiite, or Nation of Islam follower? The latter group is very strong in the prison system.
the article discusses a significant number of people
recently LGF and its spies on clearguidance (an islamist "youth education" site) found that the head of an msa at an obscure state college had advocated muslims joining the military to get the training and then either going to themiddle east or pulling and ackbar (talks excitedly about free trips to the middle east paid by US army)
see...http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=5933
more quotes from slate:
"Shortly before Muhammad's murder spree, a black American Muslim named Jeffrey Leon Battle was among those arrested in Oregon, one of a group called the Portland Six accused of ties to al-Qaida. Battle was a former Army Reservist. According to the Justice Department, he planned to wage war against Americans in Afghanistan and may have joined the Army Reserves in order to learn how to kill American soldiers."
"And in May 2002, the feds arrested a Seattle-based Muslim cleric named Semi Osman as part of an investigation of a terrorist training camp in Oregon. Osman, a mechanic in the Navy Reserves, had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. airmen. In January, he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. "
"One of the weirdest stories of a radical Muslim is that of Ali Mohamed. According to various reports that surfaced after 9/11, Mohamed came to the United States in 1986 while he was a major in the Egyptian army, and secretly, a member of Islamic Jihad. After marrying an American, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of sergeant. A busy soldier, he taught a class on Islamic fundamentalist perceptions of America to special forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and also taught at the JFK Special Operations Warfare School where he stole classified military documents. After he was discharged from the Army in 1989, he hooked up with Osama Bin Laden's nascent al-Qaida operation. Using his new American passport and connections, he spent the '90s traveling around the world helping plot terror operations. The FBI finally arrested him in 1998, and he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring with Osama Bin Laden to attack Western targets."
rather more evidence than you insinuate... i count 5... well above the classic threshold for enemy action!
How many conspirators make up a conspiracy? One? Two? Four? Eight? I do not doubt that there are terrorists in our midsts, but I do doubt that many of them are active members of our armed forces and while I find it unsettling that there is one guy who thought it would be a good idea to throw a grenade in his commanders tent, I do not put Johns Malvo and Muhammed or anyone arrested with the portland six in his league.
In fact Jane's post specifically talks about how she's not that worried about there being lots of muslim nut-jobs in the armed forces. She's not talking about the nut-jobs who left the armed forces.
I whole-heartedly agree with her post.
I'm glad to see others have pointed out the connection to Mohammed and John Lee Malvo (and that Mohammed ALSO used a grenade to attack his superior officers in the PGW).
But what does it for me is Akbar's brother who left the Navy because he felt that 9/11 was justified and that we were wrong to attack Osama bin Laden in Operation Enduring Freedom.
Warning: Danger! Danger! Danger!
Now I don't have as much evidence as some that there's a broader conspiracy here, but when you've got the guy's brother, his neighbors, his mom all saying that the man ain't right, then for God's sake, how about doing a little investigation of the bastard before he lobs a few grenades in a tent?
Daniel Pipes says that this is just another incident of our government's failure to investigate militant Islamics for fear of being labeled racist: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1042
Given that CAIR and other organizations are going to call the government racist no matter what policies are in place or how they're enforced, then why the hell should we turn a blind eye to guys like Akbar (who we already know are two eggs short of a dozen)?
But surely there could be a "cabal." Cabals are, or can be, small, after all. Three or more would do. And what they would do could be a fair amount of bloody harm.
We need to keep our heads here.
Most armed forces members aren't muslim, and most muslims in the armed forces will be loyal.
Some won't be. We should be watching for the traitros as a matter of routine. But calmly.
The BBC carried comments from a former British military officer, now military historian, on the grenade incident. (Can't give his name -- it was pre-coffee listening.) His view was that, given the size of the allied operation and duration of only a few months, 2 or 3 more "fraggings" would be about the normal number. Given that, the number of incidents so far tells us nothing much. Assuming there will be about that many, there would have to be a noticeable skew toward muslim perpetrators to say anything reliable even then.
What about the FBI agent who refused to listen in on other muslims?
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