Once again the Obama Administration is looking to call out right-wing terrorists (extremists) as a clear and present danger to the general good order of the United States …
DHS report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat
A new Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment circulated this month focuses on the threat of right-wing sovereign citizen extremist groups in the U.S. Some law enforcement groups say the threat is equal to, and occasionally greater than, the threat from Islamic extremist groups.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010, CNN reported Friday.
These types of extremists believe that they can ignore laws because those laws attack their individual rights, even in routine daily instances like a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order, CNN reported Friday.
In one instance in Louisiana in 2012 a father and son were accused of engaging in a shootout with police after an officer puled them over for a traffic violation. Two offices were killed and several others wounded in the shooting. The two men were sovereign citizen extremists who claimed the police had no authority over them.
The Homeland Security report predicts that most sovereign citizen violence in 2015 will occur during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home, during enforcement stops and at government offices, CNN reported.
"Law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations," the report states, according to CNN.
The new assessment comes as President Obama is holding a conference to focus on efforts to fight violent extremism. While the White House has come under fire for its refusal to use the term "Islamist extremism" during the talks, there has been very little discussion on the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups. <Source>
Let us examine this potentially dishonest and disingenuous phenomena …
- Recognize that the DHS has a cognizable self-interest in publishing such a report; to justify enhanced arming of police, the introduction of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) techniques for routine police encounters, and to justify an expansion in the size and scope of government law enforcement.
- Recognize that the government continues to insert itself into local or state law enforcement issues when it is politically expedient to do so for driving their domestic agenda in the mainstream media; especially if the subject at hand appeals to one of their core constituencies that has been identified as a victim class by such factors as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or class. This continued “federalization” of local criminal activities appears, in many instances, to violate the laws regarding double jeopardy although the authorities are quick to point out that a civil rights violation is a different crime – even if it does arise from the single original act.
- The enumeration of extremist violence – 24 attacks since 2010 – is ludicrous as that number is a statistically meaningless when measured against ordinary criminal activities in a city such as Chicago, Detroit, or Oakland in any given period of time.
- The characterization of extremist violence against law enforcement officers is likewise ludicrous. Common sense would explain that law enforcement officers are more prone to violence than ordinary individuals due to the nature of their profession.
- As for sovereign citizens believing they are not subject to our laws, one might observe that criminals and crazies act in the same manner; thwarting the law to obtain weapons and commit heinous acts that are every bit as bad as those committed by professed terrorists.
Dance of distraction …
Why is the Obama Administration engaging in dishonest and deceptive reporting when domestic terrorists present such a clear and present danger to our society? Let us examine the issue in the light of day.
- The greatest internal threat to our nation is domestic terrorists that are comprised of criminal gangs. Most gangs being disproportionately comprised of minorities that terrorize their own neighborhoods for power and profit. Why is the government not labeling these minority gangs as domestic terrorists and proceeding accordingly? Or is it they are afraid of the personal consequences to high-ranking politicians – like Mexican authorities submitting to the drug cartels – and the significant loss of revenue in the law enforcement-judicial-penal complex?
- Militant Black extremist groups like Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam or the New Black Panther Party present a recognizable threat equal to that of white extremist groups, but nobody is mentioning that, least of all Farrakhan’s Chicago neighbor, Barack Obama.
- Even in allegedly controlled environments such as our nation’s prisons, we are finding a concerted recruiting effort of both gang members and potential domestic terrorists. And, yet our prisons appear to be wide-open for such recruitment efforts with the authorities content to allow the prisoners to effectively run the institution while the unionized guards pull down those cushy salaries and overly-generous pension packages.
How much power should be ceded to the government … [My comments in blue italic]
Hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- “Current Terrorist Threat to the United States”
February 12, 2015; Nicholas J. Rasmussen, Director, National Counterterrorism Center
We face a much greater recurring threat from lone offenders and possibly loose networks of individuals. Of the eleven attacks in the West since last May, ten were conducted by individual violent extremists. Two occurred in the U.S.—one in September, and another in October. The majority of these lone offender attacks more closely resemble the size, scale, and sophistication of random acts of violence than they do the destructiveness of the organized and well-developed plots that we witnessed in the years after September 11, 2001. These attacks
have happened more frequently, yet thankfully resulted in relatively few casualties. We expect that individuals and small networks will try to maintain and build upon this momentum and capitalize on the media coverage that these attacks generate.
[So why are we not monitoring these specific threat vectors instead of attempting the near-impossible task of monitoring the entire nation of law-abiding citizens? Could it be that we are being hampered by those who are using our own legislators and laws against us in the guise of political correctness, multi-culturalism, and moral equivalency? Profiling works because it is a statistically-based look at threat characteristics and threat vectors.]
Many of the most ambitious terrorist groups are located in countries continuing to work through the effects of the Arab uprisings, including Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Others are active in countries undergoing insurgencies, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, and most of the countries previously mentioned.
[So why are we not restricting immigration from these countries?]
While the majority of foreign fighters have emanated from the Middle East and North Africa, more than 3,400 westerners have traveled to join the fight against the Assad regime. Within that pool of westerners, more than 150 U.S. persons from a variety of backgrounds and
locations in the United States have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria. A handful of these U.S. persons have died in Syria.
[So why is our government reluctant to demand that these people present themselves at the nearest consulate or embassy and show cause why their activities should not result in the revocation of their American citizenship or cancel their passports and provide them with a limited travel document, a one-way passport to a specific location such as the custom’s entry point in New York?]
The up-tick in moderate-to-small scale attacks in the West since last summer by individual extremists reinforces our assessment that the most likely and immediate threat to the Homeland will come from Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) or individuals with loose
affiliation to terrorist groups overseas.
Lone actors or insular groups who act autonomously pose the most serious HVE threat, and we assess HVEs will likely continue gravitating to simpler plots that do not require advanced skills, outside training, or communication with others.
[So why are we disarming law-abiding citizens and making a mockery of the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to own and bear arms? Clearly our nation is at was with an enemy that has unilaterally declared war on America. So why are we creating larger victim pools and designating areas as “gun free zones.” Better to keep our enemies off-guard and wondering if they will be killed before their actions result in a mass casualty event.]
Confronting these threats and working with resolve to prevent another terrorist attack remains counterterrorism community’s overriding mission.
[Yet we find these very same agencies competing against others for authority, budget, and personnel – withholding critical information – and acting contrary to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Even when apprised of a significant bad actor, agencies have let the American people down as we have seen from the Boston Bombing.]
There are so many fixes that need to be applied – and they are not resolved by the Administration making life unpleasant for those willing to surveil threats and take action when necessary. Especially when it involves a threat coming from minorities. Ask yourself, to what extent are Black Muslims likely to support the greater Muslim jihad? I don’t know the answer and if the law enforcement community knows, they sure are not addressing it publicly.
Bottom line …
If the Obama Administration were an honest broker for the supremacy of our Constitution, rule of law, and the goal of a color blind society, he would not even attempt to segregate and differentiate extremist/terrorist groups, but classify them all as domestic terrorists or international terrorists and proceed accordingly.
The fact the President of the United States and his cadre of progressive socialist democrats cannot bring themselves to identify our enemies as minority gangs or Islamic Jihadists is deeply troubling.
We should also not forget the events at Waco and Ruby Ridge that involved significant government malfeasance and were the proximate motivation for the “retaliatory” devastation the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
And, let us not forget that governments, politicians, and bureaucrats are invested in labeling any behavior related to governmental wrongdoing as “extremist,” especially those actions that speak to soft tyranny and the loss of our freedom and liberty.
-- steve