Who lived here
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And now it all looks strange
It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain-- "Empty Garden" by Elton John/Bernie Taupin
A Beautiful Community Hit With Terror
As our community mourns the 14 innocent public servants murdered at a Christmas party by stealth Salafist jihadist killers, and honors the first responders and medical staff who heroically saved lives, we awaited the president's address from the Oval Office.
Manifest destiny, aided by railroads and the iconic Route 66's meandering path and even the nation's first McDonald's, made the Inland Empire region not just a transit hub, but a home for a humble, yet hardworking amalgam of immigrants from the Midwest, and now Mexico and Asia.
These indefatigable American dreamers, toiled in industry, on rails, and in farms in this expansive preternatural place, nestled between snow-capped mountains, lakes and vast deserts. They fell in love, worked hard, played hard and raised families, instilling their kids with basic moral values. Many of the millions that settled here sent their eager children off to schools like mine, where their successes here intertwined with the longing dreams of their hardworking parents.
A More Thoughtful Comprehensive Plan Is Needed
When terrorism hits a place like this, it desecrates the very heart of America. And Americans -- not just those grieving here from this firestorm of unadulterated evil right here in our backyard but all of us -- deserve a clear comprehensive plan to eradicate terror from our shores.
Instead we got a partial plan, mostly recycled and a wish list, from the president. While there were, indeed, those who provided worthwhile suggestions, many of his opponents offered partisan sniping and bigotry in lieu of competent analysis. Of course, neither will do.
Prior to his Oval Office address criticism even came from other Democrats and former administration leaders about the lack of a firm plan. Leon Panetta said that with respect to ISIS, the failures were ones of policy not intel. In addition, the president's own statements have decreased trust in his ability to confront the continuing threat.
The president's January 2014 reference to ISIS as a "JV" team and his awkward assessment of ISIS being territorially contained hours before the Paris attacks was even challenged by his own military. His administration's statements around Thanksgiving of the lack of a known credible threat, hurt him politically, in light of the devastation to come a few days later from an unknown one.
To be fair, President Obama in his address, did lay out a plan of continuing moderate military engagement to hunt plotters and attack infrastructure, as well as to provide equipment and training to ISIS' enemies. While he correctly urged Congress to authorize him to use military force against ISIS, something he already has legal authority to do, the president should drop the demand that it include limitations to restrict the options of the next commander-in-chief.
Moreover, while he properly urged that Congress address gaps in the visa program and the absurd loophole that allows terror watch listees to purchase weapons, he should also include some reform for appeals to those improperly included. Lastly, his firm stance regarding the horrible toxin of bigotry, which seeks to divide us by faith and exclude Muslims from civil society is not only moral but strategic, as that is one of ISIS' nefarious goals.
Recently, politicians have broadly asserted, and sometimes backtracked on shuttering mosques, registering Muslims in databases, waterboarding, creating a government agency to promote "Judeo-Christian Western values," as well establishing a religious test for refugee admission and the presidency. The declining Ben Carson compared the task of vetting Muslim refugees to that of screening potentially rabid dogs.
He would have also done well to criticize our allies who ignore institutions within their borders that foster non-ISIS based radicalism.
Still, his plans for combatting ISIS' operations, financing and recruitment, as well as his goal of implementing a political solution, resembled more of a to do list than an actual plan.
The ISIS Threat Is Dynamic and Growing
ISIS is an apocalyptic terror organization morphing into a quasi-state "caliphate" hell bent at bringing down Western infidels in end time battles, including the moderate Muslim "coconuts" as they call them who reside there. With a land mass the size of Indiana, millions under their domain and over a billion dollars in gold and oil, they pose a much greater threat than two inspired radicals armed with pipe bombs and AR-15s, or even the rag tag, but still lethal assortment of right wing domestic anti-government or racist terrorists.
As I told Congress this fall:
While violent Salafist Jihadists have achieved extensive notoriety over recent years, they are but a tiny sliver of the estimated 2.7 million law abiding American Muslims. Recent statements by FBI officials tentatively suggest violent Salafist Jihadists are possibly plateauing at the top of an evolving contemporary terrorism threat matrix, with 900 open investigations and six foreign fighter Middle East forays a month, down from a previous sustained level of nine monthly departures. The catalytic civil wars in Syria and Iraq, a well-organized overseas ISIS presence, and the most sophisticated use of the Internet ever for terrorist recruitment and training, is indeed the most profound, though hardly the only, threat to our national security.
While ISIS is likely to continue their bifurcated strategy of inspiring do-it-yourself miscreants to attack the United States, we would be foolhardy to regard this horrendous attack on our neighbors here in San Bernardino to be the last or the worst.
A decade ago, when ISIS was known as AQI, under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it sought to expand both the geographic reach and the ferocity of its attacks with mass weapons. It will try again.
Without a clear multi-national plan to militarily defeat them into a pile of smoldering black desert dust and a definitive one to end the chaos of the Syrian civil war, which acts as a positive catalyst for them, that next attack, or the one after that, could be devastatingly worse than the one that ravaged our gentle community.
President Obama once remarked that one runs on poetry and governs with prose. We need more prose that lay out a comprehensive plan -- that understands that we are at war with an enemy who wants to strike in ways far worse than what they have accomplished so far.
According to a CNN/ORC poll, 60 percent of Americans say they disapprove the president's handling of terrorism, and citizens are almost equally divided respecting who they blame for the current problems in Iraq.
Mr. President, please listen to the public and implement a clear plan that addresses both military victory and the institution of governance to the chaos of Syria, Iraq and Libya. Failed states rather than superpowers are now our greatest threat.
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Professor Brian Levin has been the director of Cal State University San Bernardino's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism since 1999. For San Bernardino donation information, please visit the San Bernardino United Relief Fund site.