Emerson
on Fox News: Our Shameful Refusal to Call the Paris Attacks Islamic
Terrorism
by Steven Emerson
Interview on Fox News
January 7, 2015
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Martha MacCallum: We are back and we are waiting for comments
from Secretary of State John Kerry. He's expected to address the horrific
attack that took place in the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris
this morning. Steve Emerson is the executive director of the Investigative
Project on Terrorism and he joins me now. Steve, your reaction to this and
your thoughts on how prepared we are for something like this here at home?
Steve Emerson: First of all I wish I was surprised, but in the
last four weeks as you know, Martha, France has experienced three similar
attacks. Unfortunately French government officials refuse to categorize
them as Islamic terrorist attacks due to political correctness. Fortunately
they did characterize this one today. But our government today in this
morning's press reaction by Josh Earnest refused to call it an Islamic
terrorist attack; [all they] did [was] call it [plain]
"terrorism" [and] just called it "extremism." The
bottom line here, these are Islamic terrorist attacks and need to be called
as such. The second thing is that these attacks are induced not by ISIS
alone, not by al Qaeda alone, but by Muslim Brotherhood groups acting in
the West that always spread the ideological poison that there is a
"war against Islam." These are very groups that are invited to do
outreach by the White House or by Western governments, and …[their
incendiary message is] the number one inducement to carry out such attacks.
So are we prepared? Well, bottom line is the FBI has been doing a great
job in stopping 98% of the terrorist plots since 9/11. But you can't stop
all of them. So if armed terrorists want to go into a building of
journalists or commercial activities, they can carry out such an attack and
kill scores of people. The question is whether we can deter it or whether
we can use informants and get [them] in place in time. And I don't know
whether we can do that.
Martha MacCallum: You've touched on something that I think is so
central to this fight because no, you cannot protect every single building
in every city, it simply can't be done. But we did hear quite a bit about
all the people, hundreds, who have passports who went to Syria and went to
the Middle East to train with some of these groups. I often asked myself
what the follow-up has been on that and how good of a job we're doing at
figuring out who these people are before they walk into these buildings.
Steve?
Steve Emerson: Here's the question Martha. I don't think we are
doing a good enough job of identifying these volunteer fighters for ISIS or
for jihadis overseas before or after; before they go or after they return.
That's number one. Certainly in Europe they have not identified them
properly and that is why they had the attacks in France last year, or in
Belgium. Number two, you don't need to go to France, to Syria or Iraq
anymore to become a jihadi. You go online to learn how to build a bomb. You
can acquire weapons here. And three, the motivation is here online or in
the communities among radical mosques in the United States or in Paris.
That is the bottom line here. You don't see denunciations of radical Islam
by name by mainstream Islamic groups. What you hear is that this has
nothing to do with Islam. Islam is not the definition of terrorism, far
from it. The point is there is a wing within Islam, radical Islamists, who
believe in this and they have to be condemned. And unless they are
ostracized and delegitimized, these attackers and these attacks are going
to continue. And ultimately you can't seal off and insulate all of society
from attacks. They're going to succeed ultimately. So as a
counter-terrorist specialist, what I say here is that the only way to
defeat this type of Islamic terrorism is ultimately to drive them from the
blessings of the community of those radical Islamists that live within us.
Unless we do it, we are going to continue to see [more of] his. And unless
we call it what it is, radical Islamic extremism, [repeat] radical Islamic
terrorism, we are going to [be giving] them a free pass.
Martha MacCallum: They are encroaching on new places and new
ground as they have seen this morning. Steve, thank you very much. Good to
have you with us.
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