Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the war goes on.
The threat of Islamic terrorism in the United States did not die with Osama bin Laden. That’s the portrait Erick Stakelbeck paints in investigatory detail in The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government Is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat. Stakelbeck, a reporter for the Christian Broadcasting Network, talks to NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about Osama bin Laden and the continuing threat within.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Don’t you feel silly having a book with the title The Terrorist Next Door out during the month that the War on Terror (or whatever we call it now) officially ended?
Erick Stakelbeck: My timing couldn’t have been worse, right? According to some on the Left, the death of Osama bin Laden means we can now move on from our so-called terrorism obsession and concentrate on really important things like . . . climate change. And they’re serious. Yet al-Qaeda is already no doubt seeking to regroup, with scores of eager young recruits and wanna-be jihadists — including in the U.S. — marching to the online drumbeat of Anwar al-Awlaki and clamoring to avenge OBL’s death. Meanwhile, Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism is, at most, two or three years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and our own Pentagon says the mullahs could have ICBMs that can reach the East Coast of the United States by 2015. Of course, before that happens, Iran will likely unleash its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, and provoke a regional war with Israel (in which event Hezbollah might very well be unleashed in Europe and the U.S. as well). Oh, and did I mention that the Muslim Brotherhood — the granddaddy of all jihadist groups — will likely emerge as the major power broker in Egypt by the end of the year, as its various front groups throughout the West continue to gain influence? But now that Obama got Osama, we’re told, all is now right with the world. Anyway, terrorism and jihad are so 2004.
Read the rest of this interview on: National Review
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