Robin Smith“Our country is less secure than it was eight years ago” was the sobering opening statement from the chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, on Wednesday while addressing the Heritage Foundation. As the 75th anniversary of America being attacked at Pearl Harbor in World War II marked the calendar, the 81-minute “Annual State of the Homeland Security Address” painted a grim picture of a nation that may have forgotten the determination of our enemies.
The Texas congressman is charged with heading up the committee that oversees border and maritime security, counterterrorism and intelligence, cybersecurity and infrastructure protection, and transportation security, among other duties. In his stinging report about America’s weak approach to homeland security, he offered specifics that were news to me.
Speaking directly to the current policy of “strategic patience” as enforced by the Barack Obama administration, McCaul exposed this “leading from behind” as a false representation that “terrorists were on the run when they are actually on the rise.”
Noting that homegrown radicalization is dramatically increasing with aggressive recruiting by ISIS (the organization’s own moniker for the Islamic State) via online social media, the indignant chairman said that “Obama’s failed approach to counterterrorism that is politically correct” had to be repealed. In its place, measures to remove social media content and track the authors to root out the recruiters of terror, much like child pornography and sex trafficking, must be permitted.
Stating that lone wolf terrorists are “encouraged to attack the kafir, a nonbeliever of the Muslim faith, in their own backyard,” Rep. McCaul revealed that “since 9/11, the nation has seen 227 homegrown jihadist cases with a recent surge of 115 cases in 2015 and 2016 alone.” So, more than half of the homegrown attacks over the last 15 years have occurred during the last 24-month period.