Guest Editorial
By Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. | JUNE 22, 2016
Orlando and radical Islam: How you defeat an ideology
In order to lessen the likelihood of terrorist attacks like Orlando, San Bernardino and the Boston Marathon and eliminate radical Islam as an existential threat to the United States, we must, first and foremost, defeat the prevailing Islamo-Marxist ideology within our own government and the willing accomplices who sustain it by willful blindness to the danger we face.
If you are still asking the question “How can Orlando happen?” ask no more.
Stated simply, it is a sad truth that there are people in national leadership positions, who don't want America to win or who don't care much if we lose, as long as they can somehow preserve their own personal power and profit.
It is not a question of politics. It is an issue of patriotism.
The United States faces an assault by a global conspiracy, a marriage of convenience between two totalitarian ideologies, radical Islam and the political left. They have been brought together by the traits they share; their hatred of Western civilization and a commitment to the destruction of capitalistic, Judeo-Christian-based democracy.
In part, Orlando happens because the federal government practices Sharia, deliberately downplaying the menace of radical Islam and intentionally stripping law enforcement of its ability to directly counter the threat.
Kerry Picket of the Daily Caller asks: could the FBI's purge of training material relating to Islamic terrorism have led to the agency dropping the ball on Florida nightclub shooter Omar Mateen?
The FBI's training on handling possible Islamic terror suspects was turned upside down five years ago, when the Obama administration began a purge of training material that would remove references to Islam that Muslim subject matter experts, hired by the Justice Department, found offensive.
It is also fair question to ask, whether the conditions for and the handling of the Orlando attack were affected by the Obama Administration's relentless attacks on the nation's police officers and criminal-justice system, routinely and repeatedly charging that cops and the courts are awash in racial bias and Islamophobia?
The Islamic terrorist and registered Democrat Mateen was a US citizen of Afghan decent, who pledged his allegiance to ISIS and between 2011 and 2012 traveled to Saudi Arabia for Umrah, a Muslim religious pilgrimage. He was investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 for inflammatory statements and his link to Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an American radical who traveled to Syria and committed a suicide bombing.
Yet, according to recent reports, Mateen was a repeat visitor at Orlando gay nightclub before his killing spree, occasionally got drunk, may have been gay and used the gay dating and chat application Jack'd.
In the apple not falling far from the tree department, Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of the mass murderer, is a supporter of the Afghan Taliban with his own internet program, where he made radical anti-LGBT statements.
Was the murderer Mateen's motive religious or political or both? Does it matter? I don't think so.
In part, Orlando happens because radical Islam thinks it is winning. How many ISIS recruits would there be if they were doing the dying instead of us?
Practically speaking, the religious extremism and brutality of ISIS is not unlike that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
At the onset of World War II, the ordinary American Marine and soldier were unprepared for the fanaticism and cruelty of the Japanese Army.
Eugene B. Sledge, in his celebrated memoir "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa," describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths.
An ideology is a system of ideas, but ideas don't kill people, Islamists kill people.
You may not be able to eradicate an ideology, but you can certainly exterminate those who violently wield that ideology against you.
Like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the ideology of radical Islam has little chance to thrive, if there are few left eager to practice it.
It also obviates the need for winning any hearts and minds.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution." He receives email at
[email protected].
