In his inaugural address, President Obama said, “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”  The mistake here is that most all of the Muslim world is not threatening us, but Islamic radicals are and they will not have been mollified by the President’s words or intentions. The radicals—and there are more of them than any of us want to admit— do not believe we have a mutual interest and they are not interested in mutual respect.  Indeed, their goal is to destroy us and they are probably pleased that we have a new President who seems committed to making nice since that will make us an easier target.

 

 

I am sure I will get critical emails upset that I am not willing to give our new President a chance. However, as I listened to the speech, I kept thinking about the remarks by Peter Huessy of the National Defense University Foundation and Col. Randell Larsen of the Institute for Homeland Security at a conference a few months ago.

 

 

Huessy talked about the terror triad that seeks to destroy the :  1) terror masters/state sponsors (mostly the oil producing states); 2) drug cartels (80% of cartels work with terror groups); and 2) terror groups such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, FARC, etc. As Americans buy legal oil and illegal drugs, we funnel revenue into the hands of those who seek our destruction.  Working together, they will use cyber-attacks, nuclear weapons and biological hazards to bring us down.  Col. Larsen focused on the serious threat we face from bio weapons, which can now be easily and cheaply produced with supplies purchased over the internet. 

 

 

Their very candid assessment of our vulnerabilities was frightening.  We cannot prevent these sorts of attacks by talking about mutual interest.  Terrorists’ constant cyber-attacks will someday take away critical control of transportation, utilities, communications, or something similarly important.  Nuclear material must be stopped before it gets to our shores because once it is here, it can be easily and undetectably transported anywhere in the country.  Biological weapons are small and deadly and probably already here.  Our new president and his administration must accept this reality and work to ensure that we are not enabling the terror masters, allowing the terror groups to thrive, or ignoring the drug cartels. They must also work to improve our ability to respond and recover from the inevitable attack that will happen, no matter how much we talk about mutual respect.

 

 

To read more of Huessy’s thoughts, go to:

 

http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/phuessy_20080526.html

 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.