President Barack Obama’s failure to condemn Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, as a terrorist attack emboldens radical Muslims bent on attacking the United States, a noted author on the jihadist movement tells Newsmax.
Robert Spencer said he does not believe Hasan’s actions in killing 13 and wounding 30 were those of a crazed lone gunman but are connected to a larger effort of Islamic terrorists to create havoc around the country.
“It’s part of the larger wave of attacks that we have seen foiled recently in New York City; Denver, Colorado; Springfield, Illinois; Dallas; North Carolina; there have been others as well,” Spencer told Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter. “All of these seem to be large-scale plans to create havoc in the name of Islam, and it seems to indicate there has been some decision perhaps in the obvious manifest weakness and indifference of the Obama administration toward the jihad threat.”
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Hasan’s actions leading up to the Fort Hood massacre seem to confirm Spencer’s suspicions that the former Army psychiatrist did not act without any connection to Islamic terror groups. He contacted a radical imam with terror sympathies and al-Qaida operatives, which Spencer says makes it clear that he wanted to align himself with terrorists.
“Whether he himself was successful or not indicates that a network exists and that it still is waging war against the United States,” Spencer said. “One thing we can be certain of is that Nidal Hasan’s attack will not be the last.”
The president’s failure to condemn the massacre as an act of Islamic terrorism makes the United States a global laughingstock among jihadists, said Spencer, who has written two books on Islam.
“I think they view him as weak, as someone who is intent on bringing about some sort of negotiations between the United States and Iran,” Spencer said. “It shows in particular that he is willing to bend over backwards to deny and ignore reality.
“He’s so intent, as he has said so many times, about building bridges of mutual respect with the Islamic world, and he’s intent on showing that respect on the American side no matter how much disrespect he gets in return from the Islamic side.”
Spencer suggested that Obama refused to condemn the Hasan case as terrorism because he was worried how Muslims would have received such comments. The apparent show of weakness could encourage terrorists to increase attacks against the United States, just as Osama bin Laden became bolder after the Clinton administration’s exit from Somalia, he said.
“Bin Laden later said that he saw then that the Americans were weak and that they couldn’t take casualties and so now was the time to step up the jihad, and with Obama it’s the same thing,” he said. “There’s a jihad attack in the United States, and all he does is try to deny that it’s a jihad attack — deny that it has anything to do with the larger jihad against the West.
“This is the signal to them because they only understand strength that now is the time to step up terrorist activities.”
The Obama administration naively believes that Islam does not teach warfare against non-Muslims and that radical Muslims are not engaged in a religious war against the West and the United States in particular, Spencer said.
And groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have succeeded in promoting such softened views of radical Islam, he said. He described the council as a Hamas front that is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding.
“It has resisted every single anti-terror effort,” Spencer said. “It was part of an attempt to intimidate airline passengers into being afraid that they would be sued if they reported suspicious behavior by Muslims in airports and airplanes, and it has been on the wrong side in every respect since 9/11.
“It has been against every person who has tried to draw attention to the Islamic jihad threat and trafficked in smears and innuendoes and defamation in order to discredit these people," he said.
The council is "essentially a seditious group that is working against the national security of the United States," Spencer said.
The council's type of intimidation has created an atmosphere that fosters incidents such as Hasan's rampage, he said. It caused Army officials to ignore warning signs about Hasan, including his praise of waging war against non-Muslims, he said.
“They were more worried about being called a racist than they would have been about the possibility this man could go out shooting someone, which ultimately he did,” he said. “So the cost of political correctness at Fort Hood was 13 dead, and that cost is going to continue to mount insofar as political correctness is going to continue to prevent us from looking squarely at the reality of the threat we face.”
See Video: Robert Spencer slams Obama’s reaction to the Fort Hood massacre - Click Here Now
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