John Kerry Is Wrong Again: Not Talking About Terrorism Won’t Make It Go Away
In the latest episode of “ridiculous things U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says about terrorism,” the former senator and presidential candidate thinks that the media needs to stop reporting so much on terrorism — because that will help stop it.
“Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said in Bangladesh on Tuesday. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”
“But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself,” he continued, “you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
There are two major problems with this.
Firstly, not talking about something doesn’t make it less terrible. Jihadist terror has become such a widespread global problem that if one wants to spend the time aggregating and reporting news of terror attacks all over the world it is more than a full-time job. And no matter how much reporters, bloggers, and columnists try, they cannot adequately report on the sheer scale of the problem. Even if they were able to, the average reader would quickly go from enflamed to inured — as many already have regarding ISIS atrocities — at the constant influx of horror and destruction.
Yes, if the media reported less on the effects of the global jihadist threat, people might not be as concerned or enraged by their government’s utterly feckless approach to dealing with it, but to do so would be a gross disservice to the truth.
Secondly, Obama’s State Department clearly has a problem understanding what actually motivates terrorism, as evidenced by previous statements by Kerry and others on the subject. Jihadists aren’t motivated by headlines; they are, and have always been, motivated by jihad.
While Kerry’s proposed approach is nonsensical, it’s just the latest in a long line of statements by Obama administration officials desperate to associate terror attacks with anything but radical Islam. Just a few weeks ago, Kerry claimed that chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners were just as big a threat as ISIS.
“As we were working together on the challenge of [the Islamic State], and terrorism,” Kerry said last month at an international meeting in Vienna to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which deals with said substances. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we — you — are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”
The president has also taken this line. As CR’s Tom Borelli points out, President Obama has repeatedly equated jihadist terror with climate change or other factors that have nothing to do with jihad.
And who can forgive the dynamite “jobs for jihadis” interview that State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf gave last year on MSNBC when she claimed that the best way to combat the centuries-long issue of jihadism in the Middle East is to “help countries work at the root causes of [terrorism]” and ask “what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?”
Well, Ms. Harf, seeing as poverty is a problem in almost every society — including the ones that AREN’T breeding grounds for terror organizations — it might just be a pervasive ideology that has been in the region for centuries.
The kind of “terrorism” that is most often experienced (with very few notable exceptions) throughout the world is motivated by jihadist ideologies carried out by international organizations, or militants affiliated/inspired therewith, holding a clearly-defined worldview with a centuries-long history.
As laid out in greater detail by Sebastian Gorka in his book, “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War,” modern global jihadism (what some Republican politicians like to insufficiently label as “radical Islamic terrorism”) is the product of over 1,000 years of theological and strategic thought.
“Just as one must study Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and Napoleon to understand the modern Western way of war,” explains Dr. Gorka, “so one must be intimately acquainted with certain key jihadi writers and thinkers if one wishes to defeat our current enemy.”
The terrorists to which John Kerry is referring — the guys who just want to “make some noise” — see themselves in the same line as the mujahideen who took on the Soviets and the foot soldiers of the original Ottoman caliphate. While groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda may vary greatly in their strategic approaches, the overarching goal remains the same: the establishment of a global caliphate run by a medieval interpretation of sharia law.
These guys are not teenage delinquents calling in bomb threats to high schools, they are militants appealing to an ancient, barbaric tradition of oppression and terror. Nor are they just guys looking to get a hand up; they see themselves being on a divine mission to subvert our way of life. The sooner the Obama administration realizes this, the better. (For more from the author of “John Kerry Is Wrong Again: Not Talking About Terrorism Won’t Make It Go Away” please click HERE)
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