It’s bad enough that John Brennan, President Obama’s national security
deputy, thinks Gitmo jihadi recidivism is “not that bad.” But in his talk last
week with Islamic law students at New York University, Brennan made even more
reckless comments about our counterterrorism programs while pandering to one of
the worst Muslim grievance-mongers and sharia peddlers in America.
During the question-and-answer session, Brennan welcomed a question from Omar
Shahin. He identified himself as the head of the “North American Imams
Federation.” What he didn’t mention was his role as the chief ringleader of the
infamous flying imams. You remember them: They were the six Muslim clerics whose
suspicious behavior – provocatively shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before boarding the
plane, fanning out in the cabin before take-off, refusing to sit in their
assigned seats, requesting seat-belt extenders, which they placed on the floor –
led to their removal by a U.S. Airways crew in 2006.
In coordination with the unindicted terror co-conspirators of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, Shahin and his radical delegation attempted to shake
down the airline with a discrimination lawsuit and bully the citizen “John Does”
who flagged the imams’ security-undermining behavior. CAIR’s then-mouthpiece
Ibrahim Hooper blasted “anti-Muslim hysteria” by those who saw something and
said something about the imams’ in-flight shenanigans. Shahin ranted in a
teleconference strategy session in 2007 that indeed, he and his cohorts were
spoiling for the incident and planning to engineer “many, many cases” to
sabotage airline security efforts.
As head of the Tucson Islamic Center in Arizona (home to past jihadi dry-run
plotters), Shahin preached that his followers must put Islamic sharia law above
Western laws. He told the Arizona Republic that he doubted Muslims were behind
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, concluding: “All of these, they make it up.” Brennan
didn’t appear to know who Shahin was. Somebody around him should have briefed
him: Shahin’s involvement in Hamas-linked charities and radical Wahhabi “youth
groups” has earned the Jordanian-born naturalized citizen increased FBI scrutiny
over the years.
Instead, Brennan treated him as just another innocent Muslim with
“reasonable” concerns about the government. “We came to this country to enjoy
freedom,” Shahin began with faux, flag-waving emotion. “We feel that since
September 11, we aren’t enjoying these values anymore…Also, we feel that there’s
a big lack of trust between Muslims’ community and our government…My question:
Is there anything being done by our government to rebuild this trust?”
Instead of countering the narrative, exposing Shahin’s true intentions, and
vigorously defending America’s homeland security apparatus, Brennan dutifully
genuflected to the gods of political correctness. President Obama, he told the
militant 9/11 inside-jobber and jihad white-washer, is “determined to put
America on a strong course.”
No, not a “strong course” that includes national security profiling of
Islamic radicals pretending they care about our country’s best interests. By
“strong course,” Brennan assured Shahin, he meant a course towards assuaging the
civil rights groups who have objected to every security program at airports,
borders, train stations, and visa offices for the past nine years.
Brennan told Shahin that the post-9/11 response of the Bush administration
was a “reaction some people might say was over the top in some areas” (insert
indignant grievance-monger nodding and mmm-hmm-ing here) and that “in an
overabundance of caution [we] implemented a number of security measures and
activities that upon reflection now we look back after the heat of the battle
has died down a bit we say they were excessive, okay.”
It gets worse: Brennan then went on to decry the “ignorant feelings” of
Americans outraged at the jihadi attacks on American soil. And then he told
Shahin and the audience of Muslim students that he “was very concerned after the
attack in Fort Hood as well as the December 25 attack that all of sudden there
were people who went back into this fearful position that lashed out not
thinking through what was reasonable and appropriate.”
The Fort Hood jihadist slaughtered 14 innocent soldiers and an unborn baby
after an Army career openly threatening the lives of our soldiers and Brennan is
wringing his hands about the rest of us “lashing out” over government
incompetence. He believes our true sin is not in the systemic underreacting by
the military, homeland security, intel, and White House officials in charge, but
in the “overreacting” of the American public.
With clueless capitulationists like Brennan in charge of our safety, who
needs enemies?
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Video of the Brennan/flying imam (exchange starts at 2:57)