U.S. Muslim leaders turn-in wannabe terrorists

14 people have been indicted by the U.S. for

“funneling “money, personnel and services” to the Shabab, the Islamist terrorist group fighting an insurgency in Somalia.”

According to The NY Times,

“The newly unsealed indictments included charges against two women arrested Thursday in Rochester, Minn., who are accused of raising money and sending it to the Shabab, as well as charges against Omar Hammami, an Alabama man who has appeared in videos promoting the group and is believed to have become a crucial Shabab figure.”

What’s interesting about the news is the high level of cooperation between Muslim leaders and U.S. law enforcement officials.

According to IPT News,

“Federal law enforcement officials are praising Somali-Americans for their help in an investigation which resulted in the indictment Thursday of 14 people on charges of providing money, services and personnel to the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. A large part of the credit goes to Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali community leader in Minneapolis who persevered despite opposition from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and hostile mosque leaders.”

That’s welcome news because it shows that there are Muslim leaders who don’t fall under the sway of CAIR.

Attorney General, Eric H. Holder Jr. said,

“The indictments unsealed today shed further light on a deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters to the Al Shabab terror organization from cities across the United States. These arrests and charges should serve as an unmistakable warning to others considering joining terrorist groups like Al Shabab — if you choose this route, you can expect to find yourself in a U.S. jail cell or a casualty on the battlefield in Somalia.”

Strong words from Mr. holder, let’s see if they hold up.

For more on Al Shabab, go here.

Wall Street Journal - The War on Terror Goes On

The editors of the Wall Street Journal add up the results of the past few weeks on the war on terror.

The main credit here goes to the folks in the intelligence community that our friends on the left love to hate.

Credit goes as well to Barack Obama, who as President has abandoned much of his previous opposition to proven antiterror measures like warrantless wiretaps, and who has only stepped up the campaign of targeted hits on terrorist ringleaders. He's fortunate the Bush Administration left him with a potent intelligence team and the precedent of taking the fight, pre-emptively, to the terrorists on their home turf.

Highlights:

• U.S. special forces operating in Somalia killed top al Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed to have been a planner in the November 2002 bombing of a hotel in Kenya in which 15 were killed.
• Also killed in recent days was senior al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri—via a U.S. drone attack in western Pakistan—and Indonesian terrorist mastermind Noordin Muhammad Top, suspected in the July bombing of two Jakarta hotels.
• A British court convicted three men for an August 2006 plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic. The convictions were obtained largely on the strength of communications intercepts—possibly warrantless—gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a report by Britain's Channel 4.

Doesn't sound like a very high "body count" does it? But as the premise behind body counts has long been debunked, I, too, think it's been a good week.

Read the full editorial.

Stephen M. Flatow

Saving Captain Phillips - Not your ordinary terrorism story

The "Easter Sunday rescue of cargo ship Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates is a tribute to his personal bravery and the skill and steel nerves of the U.S. Navy." So says an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal On-line, and I couldn't agree more.

While not terrorism in the typical sense, the pirates did succeed in terrorizing their captives, and paid the price for it. The greater issues are the rules of law on the high seas, and for how much longer will piracy be tolerated. If the surviving pirate is tried in the United States, incarceration appears to be in the cards. If in Kenya or elsewhere in Africa, we're not too sure.

Somali pirates are turning the high seas into a state of anarchy not seen in a century or more. They'll continue to terrorize innocents until what we call the "civilized world" demonstrates that they will suffer the same fate as the pirates who made the mistake of kidnapping Captain Phillips.

Read the full article.

The New York Times: Separating the Terror and the Terrorists

The December 14, 2008 column by The New York Times public editor Robert Hoyt, Separating the Terror and the Terrorists, caught my attention because it touched upon an issue of great concern to terror victims and their families-- the general reluctance of the media to call a spade a spade. It was worth a letter to the public editor and off it went. The Times published it as the lead-off letter under Letters To the Public Editor-- Other Voices: When Labels Carry Moral Weight.

The points made by Mr. Hoyt:

"When 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.

They were “militants,” “gunmen,” “attackers” and “assailants.” Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city’s largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital — were described as “coordinated terrorist attacks.” But the men themselves were not called terrorists."

Mr. Hoyt attempts to explain the "reluctance" of the Times and other news sources to call a terrorist a terrorist.

In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology of terrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.

The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel — and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions — The Times is sparing in its use of “terrorist” when reporting on that complex struggle.

He concludes by writing

I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.

My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl’s bedroom, I’d call it terrorism — by terrorists.

Now that caught my eye and off a letter went to the public letter. Here's my response as printed:

Re “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists” (Dec. 14):

I write as the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Islamic Jihad in April 1995.

While I appreciate your approach to the use of “T-words” for a situation that “shocks the conscience,” it is, because of its subjective nature, nothing more than a small step, albeit in the right direction.

The general refusal of The New York Times and its writers and editors to recognize that people who intentionally target and murder civilians, whether on a bus in Gaza or in a hotel in Mumbai, are attempting to alter a political situation (the classic definition of terrorism) and are therefore terrorists defies logic.

STEPHEN M. FLATOW West Orange, N.J., Dec. 15, 2008

Pirates on the High Seas - Why is there no response?

Somali-based pirates hold a number of ships and many crew hostage in ports along the coast of Somalia. Why has there been no concerted effort to stop these attacks from happening? Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal comments in this short video report, Why Don't We Hang Pirates Anymore?

For a backgrounder on the link between piracy and terrorism, read "Terrorism Goes to Sea" by Gal Luft and Anne Korin in "Foreign Affairs," November/December 2004