RUTHFULLY YOURS

Good ol’ Barack Obama. So deeply do he and his administration love America, that they felt secure enough in their own patriotism to appoint an America-hating radical to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism (SCVE). After all, they undoubtedly reasoned, what possible harm could such an individual do in that kind of a setting? Perhaps you’ve heard of her—a young woman named Laila Alawa, born to Syrian parents who immigrated to the United States when the girl was ten. Soon after she became a U.S. citizen in April 2015, Ms. Alawa wrote: “I will always be Syrian. I will always be from Syria. I will always be of Syria.”

Ain’t that nice?

Ms. Alawa has long regarded the United States as a nation that oppresses and abuses Muslims, as she explained in a July 2014 piece which she wrote for The Guardian. Therein, Alawa says that ever since her arrival in America, she has “learned to view” law-enforcement officials and “my new government” with “a certain level of suspicion”—particularly after 9/11, when “stories of warrantless deportations, faith-based workplace discrimination (and termination), and arrests that resulted in unending detention were common.” Citing the “constant surveillance, government stings and wannabe informants” to which she believes Muslims in the U.S. are being subjected, Alawa laments that “my long-held suspicions have been confirmed—the knowledge that my faith makes me suspicious in the eyes of the government to which I’ve pledged my allegiance…. We know that we’re often discriminated against by our government and our fellow Americans.”

This young woman has a very bright future in the Democratic Party if she wants it. Heck, she already sounds downright Hillary-esque, and she’s only 25!

Alawa regularly disseminates views like these in her work as an opinion writer for The Guardian, Salon, Glamour, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and The Islamic Monthly. Further, she hosts The Exposé, a weekly podcast “tackling tough topics with snark and wit.”

In addition, this multi-talented woman is also a self-described “online activis[t]” whose mission is “to elevate the voices of those who are often not heard.” Her Twitter posts are rife with allegations of — (what else?) — American racism and “Islamophobia.” Some examples:

On Tuesday, June 29, 2015 ABC News-15 based in Arizona reported, “US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix before Benghazi report.”

According to the report the meeting was not a chance encounter but was apparently an arranged meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch on board her government airplane.

The appearance this meeting creates, in and of itself, calls into question the judgment of the Attorney General of the United States – America’s “Top Cop” who sets the tone for law enforcement for the entire federal government and, as a consequence, for law enforcement agencies at all levels from coast to coast and border to border.

And make no mistake – appearances can be critical. This was a message that was repeatedly hammered home by my bosses when I served as a Special Agent for the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).

Let me describe two such instances in order to properly set the stage and provide a bit of context to the meeting between the former president of the United States and the Attorney General.

When I began my career as a special agent back in the 1970’s one of my bosses, a gentleman by the name of Frank Johnson who was the section chief for the Frauds Unit where I was assigned, would hold what were known as “Payday Meetings” because every other Thursday we would stand on line and be issued out paychecks- this was long before direct deposit was implemented. These meeting provided management with an opportunity to inform the agents about any changes in priorities and to provide us with whatever information they deemed was essential to enable us to to our jobs effectively and safely. These meetings also provided agents to inform each other about any information that they might need as they pursued their assigned investigations.

At the conclusion of each of those meetings, Frank Johnson would accentuate each syllable by jabbing his ever-present cigarette in the air as he looked around the room and said, “As federal agents, it was not enough that we never engaged in wrong doing- but that we must never give the illusion of doing wrong!”

We knew that Frank was not just spouting a slogan- because he held himself to a higher standard than he held those of us who worked under him- this is what true leadership is all about.

As for the second incident – I had become an agent just months earlier and was eating lunch at a local restaurant located across the street from our offices in lower Manhattan, when an attorney I had met when I was assigned as an Adjudications Officer or Examiner as those who adjudicated various applications for immigration benefits were known. The attorney had represented several aliens I had interviewed in that earlier assignment and conducted those marriage interviews you likely have seen in various movies about aliens who marry citizens to acquire lawful immigrant status.

I had just order desert at the end of my meal when the attorney who, like myself, was sitting at the counter of the restaurant move next to me to engage in innocuous banter. Suddenly one of my supervisors noticed me as he was walking by the restaurant and quickly entered the restaurant. He walked up to me and whispered in my ear, “Mr. Cutler, when you are finished with your lunch you are to report directly to my office.” He quickly left the restaurant and I quickly headed back to my office and went to his office- with quite a bit of consternation. Clearly he was not happy.

At the recent New York City LGBT Pride parade, marchers carried a rainbow flag imprinted with black letters, “Republican Hate Kills!” That same day, Islamist Turkey dispersed an attempt at a gay pride parade in Istanbul with tear gas and rubber bullets. Turkish cops in gas masks wearing black converged on a few hundred protesters, seized their rainbow flags and detained a number of prominent figures.

The week before that, a Trans Pride parade in Istanbul had been shut down the same way. Last year, the gay pride parade had been stopped with tear gas and water cannons.

The overlap of the date for the event with the Islamic period of Ramadan ended up dooming the parade. It was eventually banned for security reasons because “provocative acts and events may take place when the sensitivities that have emerged in society are taken into account”. What did that mean?

The Anatolia Muslim Youth Association had warned that it would act “to prevent fa…ts from marching”. The Muslim Youth Association, a notoriously jolly bunch, had previously made headlines for putting up anti-Christmas posters showing Muslims punching Santa in the face.

Only in the Muslim world does a War on Christmas go together with gay-bashing.

The Muslim Youth Association is one of the leaves on the old Islamist Milli Gorus tree. Milli Gorus believes in a vast Jewish-Catholic-Protestant conspiracy against Turkey. The biggest leaf on that tree though is the AKP whose Islamist politicians rule over Turkey. The Muslim Youth Association still worships at the altar of Necmettin Erbakan, the bigoted former Islamist Prime Minister of Turkey who served as a mentor to Turkey’s current big boss Erdogan.