1. The Syrian refugee resettlement program within the United States must be immediately terminated to stop the influx of unknown persons immigrating into the US.
As evidenced by the attacks in San Bernardino, Paris, Mumbai and Belgium; as few as five to 10 terrorists can cause an out of control situation. The US government must protect her citizens, and until we have a better way of vetting Syrian refugees, which is secure and effective at rejecting (potential) terrorists and allowing them into the United States, the program must be terminated with all due speed. Terrorists have developed the capacity to create large numbers of spurious (fake) IDs and passports. Even when a refugee passes a ‘better’ vetting process and that person is cleared, there is no guarantee that the “cleared” person whose name appears on IDs presented is the person being admitted into the United States.
2. The international terror-alert systems are ineffective at stopping soft-target, small-arms and (hidden) explosives attacks.
Belgium was under a heightened state of alert for terrorism pursuant to the capture of Salah Abdeslam. The terrorists involved in the latest attacks still managed to execute their missions despite these additional security measures. Soft-target (as opposed to high-profile/high-densityi) attacks using small-arms and (hidden) explosives give the attackers a strategic-advantage because the execution of these types of attacks only requires the ability to fire a weapon and construct homemade-explosives.
These are activities that, in free (most western/affluent) countries, are relatively easy to learn without eliciting a high level of law-enforcement suspicion, or ability to track such activities. Compare that with the deadlier, and more logistically demanding, 9/11 attacks. The need for flight training and airport security evasion training during a 9/11 style attack has the potential to leave investigative breadcrumbs behind for international counter-terror investigators to pick up on, and use, to disrupt the attacks.
3. New Terrorist Tactics Require New Approaches to Counter-Terrorism.
Terror groups have figured out that soft-target assaults in the population-centers of free countries cause the same fear as a 9/11 style attack. These soft-target attacks do not leave easily visible trails of clues for our counter-terror investigators. We must look at a major reorganization of our federal government law-enforcement and counter-terror apparatus to respond to this new threat. This reorganization should undo the damage done by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security Instead of consolidating the massive federal bureaucracy, the creation of the DHS simply layered a new, more massive, bureaucracy on top of the agencies it served.
This reorganization should break down the artificial walls that now exist in the alphabet soup of federal agencies and create a dedicated counter-terrorism/intelligence unit, a law-enforcement unit, and an internal affairs unit, while scrapping the current overly partitioned model. God bless the dedicated and hard-working members of our FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation (the lead agency for terrorism investigations), but these agents should be assigned to an agency that only deals with the greatest threat of our time: terrorism.
4. We MUST Identify the Enemy.
The far-left, led by President Barack Obama, refuses to identify the enemy as Radical Islam. It’s also a shame that the far-left has so prioritized division-politics that we must repeatedly state that NOT ALL Muslims are involved in this activity. The overwhelming majority of American Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding and tax paying. Ignoring the fact that the common-denominator among many of the recent terror attacks is an allegiance to radical Islam is not only absurd, it’s suicidal and destructive. President Obama’s stubborn refusal to call our enemies what they call themselves, “Islamic,” is creating a de facto policy within the United States counter-terrorism apparatus where the fear of being accused of harassment or Islamophobia when investigating marginal tips involving Muslims is creating an unnecessary obstacle to investigations.
I have heard this from a number of the law-enforcement contacts I maintain open lines of communication with who insist that investigative tips on Muslims are handled differently than any other group of people (a kind of de facto reverse profiling). This is not sustainable and it is putting all Americans, including our significant law abiding, tax paying Muslim population, in danger.
By Daniel Bongino www.bongino.com
Akira Morikawa 