Winds of War: American Intifada

Daniel Pipes has a very interesting ‘what if’ scenario on his blog that explores the consequences of an American Intifada. He does an excellent job offering the support for such a scenario but I disagree with some of his projected outcomes.

He begins his ‘what if’ scenario by describing an America that has been lulled into a false sense of security then rudely awakened by events.

The absence of large-scale terrorism prompted analysts smugly to conclude that law enforcement had prevailed; or that the Islamists had opted for non-violent means. It thus came as a great surprise in June 2008 when 51 bombs went off within a few hours in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, killing over 800 people in schools, stores, and subways.

[I]dentical leaflets appeared near each of the bombings. Signed by Jihadis for Justice, a hitherto unknown group, the flyers called for replacing the Constitution with the Koran and bringing the country's foreign policy in line with Tehran's.

Building on the precedent of pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in mid-2006, Islamists and far-leftists brazenly supported the American intifada, punctuating their glorification of its "martyrs" with Ayatollah Khomeini's "Death to America" slogan. These messages echoed on Canadian campuses, especially Concordia University in Montreal and York in Toronto. ……The violence became daily, ubiquitous, endemic, and routine, occurring in rural towns, upscale suburbs, and metropolitan centres, targeting private houses, restaurants, university buildings, gas stations, and electricity grids…… Some terrorists avoided this ignominious fate by engaging in suicide attacks, usually accompanied by boastful Internet videos. In all, roughly 100,000 incidents meant an average 10,000 deaths and many times more injuries each year.

This is where I part with Pipes. If there were terrorist attacks in all 50 states, whether they killed 800 people of 800,000, the authorities will react by declaring a national emergency. These laws are on the books and can be initiated by the President.

New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

Violence became “daily, ubiquitous, endemic, and routine” would not be tolerated in this country. Even if political authorities delayed by dragging their feet in the muck and mire of political correctness, the citizenry will most certainly demand that the authorities take control of their family and workplace security. Back to Pipes.

As its frequency increased, terrorists became less cautious, leading to many arrests and bulging prisons.

Pipes understands that arrests will be made but something more ominous will appear on the American landscape and arrests will only be a start. Muslim internment camps.

Jihadis for Justice relied on Iranian and Saudi patronage but no U.S. retaliation followed because, before acting, President Obama required proofs that would pass muster in a U.S. court of law, something the intelligence agencies could not provide.

This is not realistic. With hundreds of thousands of Americans dead and “10,000 deaths and many times more injuries each year” happening in this country, the urge will be to act first and ask questions later or the Administration would be replaced by the citizens. Inaction will not play well in Peoria.

As have been saying for some time, our political leaders will be responsible for this citizen reaction – attack someone, anyone – because they have not been told who the enemy is (the ideology of Islamism – not terrorists), who supports it (any country, organization or individual that promotes Sharia law), and a war plan explained to the citizens how we will identify multiple types of jihad the supporters of Islamism are using as described in my book and how we are combating them.

They need to properly identify the enemy and put us on a war footing immediately if we are to avoid a constitutional crisis in this country once the American Intifada begins.

And what of the rest of the world?

Drawing on the example of the Danish imams going international in 2005 with the Muhammad cartoons, American Muslim delegations travelled abroad to publicize their complaints, arousing vast emotional support by presenting themselves as an innocent but brutalized community. Majority Muslim states unanimously condemned Washington for "Islamophobia" and the U.N. General Assembly passed nearly weekly resolutions condemning U.S. practices, with only Australia, Israel, and Micronesia reliably voting with the Obama administration.

Of course, this appeasement would be expected. But I wonder if the average European will follow the dictates of their elitist leaders especially when they see the acts of terrorism committed on a daily basis in the US. They will be looking over their shoulders and demand that steps be taken against Muslims to prevent a European Intifada – or civil war.

Pre-intifada, terrorists such as Ahmed Ressam and Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer exploited Canada's less stringent security environment as a base from which to attack the United States, a pattern that now continued. Repeated closings and crossing delays of the border with Canada followed, harming the Canadian economy and provoking widespread resentment.

Again, I disagree. If Islamists use Canada as a base of operations and it seriously affects the Canadian economy, I seriously doubt that Canadian citizens will allow tat to happen.

Just as a Norwegian grocery store chain urged the boycott of Israeli products in 2002, so did it initiate the 2009 international anti-U.S. economic boycott. What began by marking American products with a red-white-blue sticker ended by dropping them all together. "Mecca Cola," "Beurger King," and Barbie doll replacements Fulla and Razanne, all created years before the American intifada began, were now joined by other Muslim replacements for their better-known U.S. equivalents. Inspired by the success of Ülker, a Turkish corporation long associated with Islamist causes, to replace Coca-Cola with its Cola Turka, other Islamist-affiliated companies commercially exploited anti-American sentiments. Rumblings of an Arab oil boycott along the lines of 1973-74 led to a surge in the price of energy, causing an economic recession, but structural changes in the oil market made such an effort too difficult to sustain.

Perhaps. But we can mount our own boycotts of goods and services. There are products and services that world needs.

Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the terrorist campaign ended in June 2012. A combination of draconian security measures, beefed-up intelligence capabilities, and a relentless focus on the pool of Islamist suspects led to a severe drop-off in terrorist capabilities. Battered by the experience, American Islamists realized the error of their tactics and decided to forego violence. Like their counterparts in Egypt, Syria, and Algeria, they took up lawful means and worked henceforth within the system.

First, this country will not roll over and take the Intifada for 4 years. The economy and the social fabric of America would be in ruins. The end of the Intifada will come long before that and Islamists realize that as of today they are making gains in establishing Shari law or at least adherence to it through the work of their useful idiots on the Left.

Azzedine Layachi of St. John's University further explained about Algeria that "The Islamist movement tried to challenge the state head on and it failed miserably. But Islamist sentiment has not been defeated. On the contrary, Islamists are now part and parcel of the political and cultural scene."]

The ending of the four-year American intifada signalled, as in Algeria, the opening of a political battle over the country's future. Would the Constitution of 1787 remain in place, or would it be complemented or perhaps replaced by the Koran and the Shariah?

What do you think?

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