A great deal of the mainstream media discussion has revolved around whether or not the Islamic State, also called ISIS, is a direct threat to the United States. This perspective, you see, is somehow meant to slow down what some commentators are calling a “rush to war.”
In an interview with The Huffington Post, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg mused, “Yes, I understand ISIS poses a threat to the United States. It’s not clear it poses an imminent threat.”
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman writes, “ISIS is awful, but it is not a threat to America’s homeland.”
You’ll recall President Obama complaining that the perception of an ISIS threat is the fault of social media, “The world’s always been messy … we’re just noticing now in part because of social media,” he told donors at a fundraiser in late August. In other words, nothing has really changed. There is no unusual threat, and all of this is normal. Or something.
The New York Times, moving that preferred White House point of view, asserted, “Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians .”
Unfortunately, the facts on the ground tell a very different story.
On June 21, 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin was murdered in cold blood by a man who told investigators it was, according to NJ.com, “an act of retribution for U.S. military action against Muslims in the Middle East. According to court documents filed Wednesday in Washington state, where he is accused of killing three other men, Ali Muhammad Brown said he considered it his mission to murder 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as an act of ‘vengeance’ for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.”
It was a “just killing,” according to his confessed murderer, a “self-professed jihadi,” as Martha MacCallum notes at FoxNews.com. Mr. Brown has also confessed to killing four other men in the same manner, shot multiple times in isolated areas, reports NJ.com.
If the national mainstream media had an interest in covering news, whether or not it disturbed the White House narrative, they would have perhaps noticed that Mr. Tevlin’s murderer is, as John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog notes, essentially a jihadi serial killer, and possible financier of terrorism through bank fraud.
Then there was the largest police operation in Australian history implemented last week in Sydney and Brisbane. Fox News reports, “Australian counterterrorism forces detained 15 people Thursday in a series of suburban raids after receiving intelligence that the Islamic State militant group was planning public beheadings in two Australian cities to demonstrate its reach.”
“The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the plan involved kidnapping randomly selected members of the public off the streets in Sydney and Brisbane, beheading them on camera, and releasing the recordings through Islamic State’s propaganda arm in the Middle East.”
So, the Islamic State isn’t a danger to the United States, and it isn’t here, but it does happen to be in Australia. Just because.
Here’s the truth of the matter: The Islamic State does not need to be parachuting into Miami, New York, Toronto or Sydney, or even flying planes into buildings to be a threat to everyone’s homeland. The terrorist group’s continued success in the Middle East and its propaganda is meant to, and does, inspire sociopaths around the world.
In fact, the Islamic State’s plans to enact terrorism here in the United States is already underway.
The New York Daily News covered the warnings of New York Police Commission Bill Bratton that the Islamic State is targeting the city, “The terror group responsible for the videotaped executions of two American journalists and a British aid worker are calling for ‘lone wolf’ attacks on Times Square. The recent call for terror — found in an online chat room that claims to be affiliated with the Islamic State — came with directions on ‘how to prepare a bomb in the kitchen’ as well as a list of tourist spots that will create ‘pictures of horror.’”
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