A blind eye to homeland threats

Last month, the United Kingdom raised their terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe.” The Australian government followed suit by raising their threat level, citing a growing concern over the domestic impacts from the Islamic State, or ISIS.   This week, Australian authorities broke up a massive ISIS plot to behead random people and broadcast the murders.  However, the Obama administration has decided not to raise our terrorism threat level.

After the UK’s decision, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson stated that the United States will not follow suit, saying: “[T]he U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are unaware of any specific, credible threat to the U.S. homeland from ISIL.”

Additionally, in spite of major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC receiving direct threats from ISIS, it is being reported that the recent National Threat Assessment for Domestic Extremism intelligence report by the FBI makes absolutely no reference to Islamist terror threats.

Currently, our southern border is awash with droves of people skirting immigration laws. This creates the perfect environment for terrorist groups to penetrate our country. In fact, many experts have already issued warnings about ISIS’s interest in penetrating our border.  A recent report by the group Judicial Watch shows that ISIS is currently operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and that an attack on our border is “coming very soon.”

However, ISIS may already be actively recruiting in America. So far, two Americans have died fighting for the terrorist group ISIS. Abdirahmaan Muhumed and Douglas McAurther McCain, both died in the same battle.

In addition to both jihadi fighters dying in the same battle, both were from the same area in Minneapolis. Moreover, McCain attended high school with Troy Kastigar, a jihadi who died in 2009 fighting for the al-Qaeda affiliated group al-Shabab. These two jihadi’s both attended Cooper High School in Robbinsdale, Minnesota together and at one point in time, the two were said to be “inseparable.”

Minnesota has a large Somali-Muslim population and has turned into a hotbed for recruiting fighters for groups such as al-Shabab and ISIS. Dozens of men from the Twin Cities have chosen to fight for ISIS. Fox News has recently reported that there is possibly a third jihadi fighter in Syria who has attended Cooper High.

With so much terrorist recruitment taking place in the Twin Cities region, coupled with the FBI’s failure to cite Islamic terror in their recent terrorist threat report, there appears to be a clear failure from our government in recognizing domestic terror threats in the United States.

This failure should not strike anyone as surprising. The Obama administration has continuously dismissed, discounted, and ignored national security threats. When Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine and threw NATO into a tailspin, President Obama’s response was little more than a light slap on the wrist; placing negligible economic sanctions on Russia. After Syria violated the ‘Red Line’ set by Mr. Obama regarding to use of chemical weapons, Obama dithered and denied even setting a red line.

Reports show that President Obama received notifications regarding the growing threat from ISIS in the President’s Daily Brief for over a year; yet, when ISIS came into the public view President Obama Obama dismissed them as the “jayvee team’.

Dismissing ISIS’s threat to our homeland security is on par for the Obama administration’s national security plan as a whole. Despite ISIS threats to at least three major U.S. cities and what seems to be a burgeoning recruitment hub in Minnesota, the FBI seems to be taking a blind eye to Islamic terror.

Additionally, President Obama, in his recent address regarding an ISIS strategy, felt that it was important to state that the Islamic State terrorists are apparently “not Islamic.”

One has to question the motives regarding the administration’s unwillingness to label radical Islam as a threat. Is it denial, negligence, or fear over the idea that an administration official might be labeled “Islamophobic?”

Following such recent events as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood massacre, it is important that we question Homeland Security and the FBI’s decision not to raise the terrorist threat level. Additionally, we must demand that those in charge of ensuring our domestic security properly recognize and label the threats that we face.