The Redhunter

1) Yes Islam has a lot to do with their motivation

2) That the jihadists are home-grown and not directly tied to al Qaeda is not good news, as some would have us believe.

3) That they made some dumb mistakes does not mean that we can dismiss the threat from others

4) Our lax attitude towards illegal immigration isn't helping the situation.

5) The apologists will dismiss this as no big deal.

Let's take these on one at a time

The Role of Islam

Let's see what the suspects themselves had to say. From an AP story carried by Yahoo News (via LGF)

One defendant, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying: "In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone ... attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad." ...

"It doesn't matter to me whether I get locked up, arrested or get taken away," another defendant, Serdar Tatar, was alleged to have said. "Or I die, it doesn't matter. I'm doing it in the name of Allah."
...

They often watched terror training videos, clips featuring
Osama bin Laden, a tape containing the last will and testament of some of the Sept. 11 hijackers....

Be sure to also read Andrew McCarthy's piece in which he reminds the media that "It’s not about the organization, it’s the ideology." And the ideology is the jihad.

Independent Jihad

The main theme of Walid Phares' Future Jihad is that our enemy is a lot larger than any one terrorist group. We face a trioka of jihadists; Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists. It it holds true that the suspects were inspired by OBL, that puts them in the neo-Wahabbist subcategory. Read the book or go to the book review section of this blog for my six-part review of Future Jihad.

To make a long story short, when the Caliphate existed, a jihad could only be authorized by the proper political authority, ie the Caliph or his designate. With the end of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 jihad was "privatized". Now, any Muslim Imam of proper standing can authorize one. There's a long legal history behind all this, but suffice it to say that, for example, when Osama bin Laden issued his 1998 fatwa declaring war on the United States, he dressed it up with all the proper protocols.

This is not some theory Dr Phares or I cooked up. This May 2006 story in the Washington Post describes the career of one Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who in January of 2005 posted a treatise called "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance" under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri on the Internet (I can't find an exact link for the work, but see another description here). From the Post story

Nasar, 47, outlines a strategy for a truly global conflict on as many fronts as possible and in the form of resistance by small cells or individuals, rather than traditional guerrilla warfare. To avoid penetration and defeat by security services, he says, organizational links should be kept to an absolute minimum.

"The enemy is strong and powerful, we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah," he said in one paper. "The preparations better be deliberate, comprehensive and properly planned, taking into account past experiences and lessons."

While we can't say with certainty - yet anyway - whether the Ft Dix terrorist suspects were motivated by Nasar's work, it would seem that we have a case of independent jihad. Given the evidence it is foolish in the extreme to suppose that to be a terrorist threat we must find a direct link to al Qaeda.

Foolish Terrorists

The Ft Dix suspects were caught because they were stupid. The first tip came from an average citizen

The unidentified clerk is being credited with tipping off authorities in January 2006 after one of the suspects asked him to transfer a video to DVD that showed 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said.

"If we didn't get that tip," said U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, "I couldn't be sure what would happen." FBI agent J.P. Weis called the clerk the "unsung hero" of the case.

Another tip came from a camera store owner (via Michelle Malkin)

(U.S. Attorney Christopher) Christie called the camera shop owner that alerted federal authorities an American hero. The suspected terrorists had gone to the shop about 16 months ago to transfer training videos from video tape to DVD's.

"The camera store owner saw Muslim men in military garb toting weapons in the woods. He heard them talking about jihad and how Allah was great. He called the FBI and became a hero," Christie said.

The men had trained at a firing range in the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania and Christie said they planned to use the DVD's as recruitment tool.

With stories like these it's easy to dismiss these guys as idiots. But not so fast. Remember the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center? The perpetrators were caught when one of them, Mohammed Salameh, went back to the Ryder rental agency to get back his security deposit on the truck they used in the bombing.

Yet 8 years later more determined - and smarter - terrorists knocked the buildings down.

Our enemy makes mistakes, but they learn from them. They are no more stupid than we were in the early days of the Second World War.

Not Here Legally

The indefatigable Michelle Malkin has the lowdown on the suspects. The bottom line: 3 of the 6 are in the country illegally.

I don't want to rehash the whole illegal immigration thing now, but suffice it to say that to me the security problem is not so much on the southern border per se as with our general lax attitude towards illegal aliens. I think that Richard Miniter got it right when he wrote in Disinformation that we don't really face a threat from jihadists coming across from Mexico.

"No Big Deal"

The apologists are out in force. There are two sorts; Muslims who pretend that the way Islam is currently taught and interpreted in all too many places is not the problem, and the left.

The worst offender in the first category is, predictably, CAIR. Here's their press release on this affair (emphasis added)

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/8/07) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today applauded efforts by federal law enforcement authorities that apparently thwarted a planned attack on Fort Dix in New Jersey.

In a statement, the Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group said:

"Based on the information gathered in this case, it seems clear that a potentially deadly attack has been averted. We applaud the FBI for its efforts and repeat the American Muslim community's condemnation and repudiation of all those who would plan or carry out acts of terror while falsely claiming their actions have religious justification.

"We continue to urge American Muslims to be vigilant in reporting any suspected criminal activities that could harm the safety and security of our nation."

CAIR also requested that media outlets and public officials refrain from linking this case to the faith of Islam. The council asked mosques and Islamic institutions in New Jersey and nationwide to report any incidents of anti-Muslim backlash.

Along with innumerable condemnations of terror, CAIR has in the past launched an online petition drive called "Not in the Name of Islam," initiated a television public service announcement campaign of that same name and coordinated a "fatwa," or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and religious extremism.

Blech.

Unfortunately the problem is not isolated to extremist groups like CAIR, which has been pretty well exposed. Get ready to hear the "Islam had nothing to do with it" line again and again. From a Fox News story

"If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks. "But when the government says `Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous."

"Don't equate actions with religion," he said.

Sure.

On the left side, go and watch Keith Olbermann dismiss the Jersey jihadists as a bunch of "morons". He sneers at the whole affair, seeminly accusing the FBI of making the whole thing up. Olbermann's a sight to behold - for all the wrong reasons.

Wonkette (via NRO) is her usual snotty self

The FBI has successfully broken up yet another fiendish terrorist plot on American soil. These brave defenders of freedom have once again ensured that Americans can rest easy, safe from the threat of a couple guys buying some guns and trying to… take over an Army base??? ...

Ok. So, the plot was: six dudes from New Jersey buy some guns and storm Fort Dix. The Fort Dix that is full of lots and lots of Army reservists with way, way more guns. And, like, extensive military training and shit. Yes, thank god these terrorists have been caught and locked up before they could be killed within minutes of deciding to carry out the dumbest fucking terrorist plot we’ve ever heard of.

Be sure to read the comments because the leftards are in rare form.

Gregory McNeal (NRO link above) takes down Wonkette . He points out that on a military base everyone doesn't go around carrying their weapons. Most of them are secured in the armory. Only the guards at the gate are carrying.

I haven't driven by one of the military bases in our area recently (Walter Reed being more of a hospital), but I think the last time I did I didn't see any armored vehicles nearby.

Having the element of surprise, it's easy to imagine the jihadists killing all of the guards and getting into the base. Once there they could break up into teams and wreak a fair amount of havoc before being stopped.

More to the point, imagine how this would have played in the press had they even gotten past the gate.

The Myth of "Good Deeds"

I didn't make this one of my original "take aways", but after reading a piece on the Jersey Jihadists on NRO I decided to add it.

This goes to the jihadist mindset, so is important. Mary Habeck points out that

Most of the men were Muslims (and Albanians) from the former Yugoslavia. While we may see our actions in this war-torn part of the world as one of our “good deeds,” in the jihadist conspiratorial vision of events, the U.S. was only involved in this conflict in order to kill Muslims. The intervention of foreign jihadis decisively turned the tide against the Serbs, not U.S. military action. It is also worth noting that extremist Islamic preachers have remained in Bosnia and Albania, winning converts to radical Islam and to jihadism.

She adds something that I missed

Finally, the reports describe a video showing “ten young men” firing weapons, yet only six were arrested. This is not over.

Perhaps not.