The U.S. military is under systemic attack by jihadist “influencers” trying to lure them into terror-related activities. Soldiers are not the only targets, but considering that our military contains young, healthy people, trained in weapons use, it makes sense that those wanting to infiltrate and radicalize people would see soldiers as fertile ground for a campaign to undermine American society.
And, to be clear, jihadist subversion is NOT aimed only at Muslims — one of the two former soldiers involved in the terror attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas (both of whom had ties to Ft. Bragg) plus the dual Irish-American arrested on December 20, were not Muslims.
The Department of Defense and the FBI have been reluctant to acknowledge the scope of the problem. To understand how far back it goes, remember “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” (SJS).
In the years after 9/11, the FBI identified SJS in a long list of men accused of terrorist activities, including the Fort Dix Six, the Lackawanna Six, Naveed Afzal Haq, Hesham Hadayet, Derrick Shareef, Sulejman Talovic and others in Portland, Lodi, and Northern Virginia. London, Madrid and Amsterdam were said to have outbreaks of the disease as well.
“Unrelated” attacks, they said. “Sudden” attacks, they said. “Unattached to any larger system,” they said. They were, of course, wrong. By 2007, the New York Police Department (NYPD) bravely staked out territory, studying the people, the plots and the background.
At the time I wrote about the report:
“In a landmark report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” experts studied 11 cases of homegrown jihadists, isolating specific factors that appear to move some people – primarily young men – to radical, violent activity even as most American Muslims remain unmoved by or even repulsed by the idea of violence committed in the name of religion. Among the NYPD’s findings:
“–Salafist ideology combines Islam with a determination to solve problems through violence. Salafist institutions and literature are readily available in the West.
“–Al Qaeda provides inspiration, but generally not operational assistance.
“–Susceptible people seek an identity or a cause and often self-identify before finding compatriots. Radicalization has proceeded more slowly in the U.S. than in Europe, where even second and third generation immigrants have trouble assimilating into the local culture – but more quickly since 9-11.
“–The Internet is an enabler, providing an anonymous virtual meeting place. Sites other than mosques can provide the sense of community otherwise isolated people may be seeking.
“–A “spiritual sanctioner” and an “operational leader” are necessary to move people from the ideological phase to an operational terrorist cell.
“–Not everyone who begins the process of radicalization becomes a terrorist; there are several points at which people drop out.”
Move forward. A number of American soldiers have been arrested and charged with activities that are/or should be called terrorism, most notably, Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major who killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on November 5, 2009. Hasan’s jihad syndrome was anything but sudden. He was known to have corresponded with terrorist Anwar Al Awlaki, and his colleagues reported him several times for lectures and comments about Islam.
Nothing happened until it happened. In the end, Hasan was not tried on terror charges.
In 2011, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security held hearings on the case that resulted in a 2013 report entitled, “A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure in the Fort Hood Attack.” It said:
“Although neither DoD nor the FBI had specific information concerning the time, place, or nature of the attack, they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it. Our investigation found specific and systemic failures…”
They do get some of them.
Soldier Ethan Meltzer was arrested in 2020 and charged with sending sensitive details about his unit to the Order of Nine Angles, described as a Satanic left-hand path occultist and terrorist network, which apparently planned to pass the information to jihadists, who would then carry out an attack.
In 2021, Cole Bridges, a former U.S. Army soldier, was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and attempting to murder U.S. military service members. Bridges pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.
They missed Shamsud-Din Jabbar, and even now, knowing that he visited Cairo but can’t say what he did there, insist, “all investigative details and evidence that we have now still support that Jabbar acted alone.”
America’s soldiers are our guardians; they volunteer to protect and defend us. They put their lives on the line for us. DoD should stop worrying about unvaccinated soldiers and DEI lapses and protect our soldiers by focusing on jihadist networks working to undermine and destroy our country.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFocus Quarterly magazine.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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