Emerson
on Fox and Friends: US Vulnerability to Lone Wolf Islamic Terrorists
by Steven Emerson
Interview on Fox News Channel
December 16, 2014
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Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Gunfire ending a hostage standoff in
Sydney. There you hear the gunshots and explosion. The alleged gunman, Man
Haron Monis, among the three killed in this siege.
Steve Doocy: Monis operated apparently as a lone wolf attacker, a
virtual jihad of one. And now there's word more than 20 people inside the
United States have tried to join or provide support to terror groups in
Iraq and Syria since the month of March.
Brian Kilmeade: So how vulnerable is the US to an inspired lone
wolf attack like this, or do you even term it that? Let's ask Steve
Emerson, the executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Steve, you look at that. We're very simpatico with Australia on many
issues. Should we be learning from that?
Steve Emerson: We should have been learning from lone wolf
attacks since Major Nidal Hasan [carried out his massacre in Fort Hood] in
2009 and Carlos Bledsoe [killed a National Guard recruiter in Little Rock]
in 2009. We've been having lone wolf attacks for nearly eight years now, so
this is not something new unfortunately. It is a symbol of how terrorism
has now become so instantly attainable to anybody. You don't have to be a
member of any group. You don't have to be vetted. You don't have to be
selected. You can become instantly famous, be martyred and become a
national symbol around the world. And we've had this all over [the
country]. It's not just the 20 people who volunteered to go to Syria and
Iraq; it's the potential [of] hundreds of radicalized Muslims in the United
States. We're not talking about the majority of Muslims. We're talking
about a select small percentage, but those that rise above the threshold of
[being] willing to carry out a violent attack. And there are scores and
scores of them.
Hasselbeck: Were you frustrated at all listening to Prime
Minister Abbott, his description and understanding of what occurred? To
anyone else this looks like a terrorist attack with someone who has ties to
ISIS here, ISIL. He seemed to think this guy is just sort of inconsistent
and weird.
Steve Emerson: To tell you the truth, I was watching him last
night at 12:30. I knew I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. After watching him, I
couldn't go to sleep because he refused to utter the term [Islamic]
terrorism.
Doocy: Sounds familiar.
Emerson: He refused to use the term radical Islam or Islamic
terrorism. He refused to call this guy [an] Islamic terrorist and refused
to even call ISIS an Islamic terrorist group or terrorist group. He called
it a "death cult", basically exonerated it of any culpability.
That is really the problem, not just of him but of all Western leaders, of
David Cameron and President Obama who call [ISIS] devoid of any type of
religious motivation.
Kilmeade: Which is just not true.
Steve Emerson: Absolutely not true. Calling it a radical Islamic
terrorist group is calling it what it is. When we call Nidal Hasan's act
[of murder] an act of "workplace violence" and we don't call what
happened over the summer in New Jersey an act of jihad, which is what
happened when they caught Ali
Muhammad Brown after he killed four people and said "I'm carrying
out jihad," we are encouraging and emboldening [jihadists]. These are
lone wolf terrorists and they can carry it out with a knife, an ax or a
gun.
Doocy: We better get the message. Steve Emerson, always a
pleasure. Thank you sir.
Hasselbeck: Thank you Steve.
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