Can You Shave an Islamist’s Beard With Occam’s Razor?
Not if the barber is Barack Obama. Two days after it was blindingly obvious that the atrocity of San Bernardino was a terrorist attack carried out by Islamists, Obama clung to the possibility that this was workplace violence (yeah, of the Nidal Hasan variety). He also grudgingly admitted that it was possibly terrorism, but even then he would not speak its name. Rather than name the specific ideology that inspired this brutal act, Obama retreated to his usual circumlocution of “people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies.” Then he descended into the vapidity of calling for more gun control: after all, no crisis should go to waste, right?
Truth be told: gun control will do nothing to impede people like Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who broke numerous state and federal firearms and explosives laws, and who engaged in an attack that they knew would certainly result in their deaths. Such people (and I use that term loosely) are extremely infra marginal demanders of firearms and bombs. The increase in the cost of obtaining these instruments of mass mayhem caused by any even remotely plausible gun laws would still put that cost below their very high willingness to pay, and if they are not deterred by the prospect of violent death, the punishment for violating gun laws is clearly not going to deter them either.
Although Obama has seen fit to lecture us in the aftermath of Charleston, Sandy Hook, Ferguson, and even Louis Gates, for Christ’s sake, his statements in the aftermath of San Bernardino were limited primarily to his weekly radio address, recorded before he went to party down at the White House holiday party, with, among others, BLM luminary Deray McKesson. Priorities, you know.
One of the obvious early tells of the Islamist nature of the attack was that mere hours after Farook had been identified, his family members were participating in a press conference with Muslim Brotherhood front organization CAIR. Another tell came yesterday, when the Farook family’s scumbag lawyers gave a press conference that can be summarized as: “Who is the real victim here?” Hint: Farook, Malik and Muslims generally. After all, somebody teased Farook about his beard, and that might have set him off.
The administration picked up the victimhood narrative, with Attorney General Lynch saying that her “greatest fear” is the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” and promising to prosecute speech that “edges towards violence” (whatever the hell that means). So, along with trashing the Second Amendment, the administration has its sights set on the First. No doubt the 5th can be jettisoned too, if guns or politically incorrect speech are involved.
No doubt the administration’s denial of reality and its attempt to suppress speech has many causes. For one, San Bernardino totally contradicts the administration’s narrative on terrorism. For another, it creates serious problems for the administration’s plans to bring in large numbers of Syrian refugees. Within a few hours of her being named, Tafsheen Malik’s numerous family connections to Islamists in her home country of Pakistan and her adopted country of Saudi Arabia were documented. Pakistani intelligence said that the family had well known extremist connections: Now they tell us. Her father was an extremely conservative and rabidly anti-Shia immigrant to Saudi Arabia.
Yet the State Department and the immigration authorities failed to uncover these facts in their investigations of potential terrorism connections before granting her a fiancee visa. So yes, we can’t vet someone who has lived in countries with functioning governments that are (allegedly) our allies, but we can evaluate the risk of tens of thousands of people coming from a country embroiled in a civil war, for whom it will be impossible to obtain any documentation whatsoever. And so much for the women pose no risk thing.
With Obama’s obduracy, we can expect more of the same. The demonization of domestic opposition, and the turning of a blind eye to real enemies within and without.
So how do we go about booing CAIR out of the town square? They need to be pushed aside to the fringes like white supremacists have. In Houston, what are we going to do about them and the Islamists mosques in our town?
Comment by Lyle — December 5, 2015 @ 1:39 pm
It was about on the scale of various IRA atrocities in Britain and Ireland. Many members of Congress supported the IRA.
Comment by dearieme — December 6, 2015 @ 8:25 am
William of Occam would reject the conventional analyses that Obama is in denial, that he is indecisive, that he is obdurate; he would reject all of these hypotheses. These are all ultimately apologies for the behavior of someone assumed to be so smart. That premise is unwarranted.
William of Occam would appreciate the hypothesis that Obama is a Muslim. That is the simple and incontrovertible hypothesis, one that fits the facts in the most elegant manner. From this, all else makes sense.
Comment by Richard Whitney — December 6, 2015 @ 10:50 am
Rand Paul says that California has every gun control law that Barack Hussein wants – and those laws did not stop these vermin from getting the weapons.
The attempt to portray the female as a “housewife” is hilarious – she wouldn’t drive a car, but she certainly could shoot windows out of an SUV in a rolling shootout with police.
And the mom- she was just planted in a side room somewhere and “knew nothing” about pipe bombs, etc. – she thought they were in the male’s “man-cave” while he was working on cars.
It should be blindingly obvious that Barrack Hussein Obamatollah hates this country. The Imam in Chief, the Apologist in Chief, absolutely hates this country.
All of that “hope and change” worked all right – for a bunch of towelhead terrorists.
Kind of interesting – the very second that Obamatollah hears about some police shooting in a city, he gets in front of TV and starts pontificating and blowharding about guilty police and all sorts of other stuff, before the facts are in.
Yet, let a Muslim terrorist, for the nth time now, kill people in some sort of “holy jihad” – well, Obamatollah becomes mute, silent, loses his teleprompters.
Absolutely incredible.
And I say again – Obamatollah hates this country, and he is in league with those of whom he dares not speak.
Comment by elmer — December 6, 2015 @ 10:53 am
Elmer,
Obama loves muslims and money. I just spoke with a investment adviser who invests for Obama and he said that Friday the president bought stocks in American gun manufacturers, and his speech this Sunday night is about gun control, and so tomorrow Americans will go out and again, buy record number of guns and Obama’s stock investment will be very profitable.
ZAART! Obama je paiatz a ny president.
Comment by traveler — December 6, 2015 @ 12:58 pm
Dearieme: “It was about on the scale of various IRA atrocities in Britain and Ireland. Many members of Congress supported the IRA.”
This is a silly comparison for several reasons.
1) Although many members of Congress doubtless supported the political goals of the IRA, you will find practically none of them publicly supported IRA terror tactics.
2) The IRA’s war was a typical post-colonial conflict in which self-determination of a small entity — Ulster — conflicted with the principle of sovereignty of a larger entity — Ireland. It was fought for very limited ends and actually killed very few, a few thousand by both sides over 30 years.
In contrast, the recent terror bombings and shootings are done for essentially no rational reason at all, unless you count the unlimited end of forcibly converting the whole world to Islam as a rational goal.
Comment by Chris Neely — December 6, 2015 @ 2:11 pm
With every violent extremist from evangelical Christians to orthodox Jews having free access to buy guns, no one in the US can feel safe. Why can’t we take a lesson from France or Belgium and enact strict gun control laws?
Comment by aaa — December 6, 2015 @ 6:30 pm
@aaa. I fear the Mormons.
Anders Behring Breivik tried to obtain an automatic rifle for his terrorist attack, but failed to do so. Terrorists, hence, might not be deterred by the punishments inflicted from violating gun control laws, but they can very much be hindered by the fact that guns – as a result of those laws – are not widely available.
Comment by mahmoud — December 6, 2015 @ 7:25 pm
@aaa. Exactly, what do you have in mind? Perhaps, house-to-house gun searches by the BATF? “Stop and frisk”? Oh, wait ,the progressives nixed that as being a violation of some select groups’ civil rights. 6% of the U.S. population is responsibke for 50%+ of the murders and they live in “blue model” cities. Do you really fear Christians and Jews when you should just avoid gangbangers in Chicago, Philadelphia and LA?
Comment by The Pilot — December 6, 2015 @ 8:13 pm
Having failed miserably as head-of-state, Bozo is now campaigning to head the U.N.,
an entity which shares most of his views. As such he will bring the long-awaited
demise of that useless organization.
Comment by eric — December 6, 2015 @ 9:45 pm
Actually Chris Neel, there was a lot of support from Congressmen and Senators for the provisional IRA’s (the original IRA disbanded itself when the British army was sent in to, funnily enough, protect Catholics from Protestant gangs) campaign of violence. Many of them actively raised money for the PIRA and funded it’s terrorist campaign. They were apologists for the IRA’s campaign against its own people (the disappearances) and the flow of money from the USA only dried up after 9/11
Comment by Andrew — December 6, 2015 @ 9:52 pm
Although many members of Congress doubtless supported the political goals of the IRA, you will find practically none of them publicly supported IRA terror tactics.
Several were NORAID supporters, which actively raised money which was used for the purposes of murdering British soldiers and bomb British citizens. Peter King is one example. Probably the only good thing about 9/11 was it showed an idiotic subset of Americans that terrorism isn’t some romantic, noble cause.
Comment by Tim Newman — December 7, 2015 @ 9:20 am
Mahmoud,
How was Breivik “hindered” by not having a fully automatic weapon? He killed 69 and wounded more than three hundred others in a more than one hour long spree. Do you really think he would have been able to kill more with a fully automatic weapon?
Had he been more technically adept, he might have been able to convert his semi-auto mini 14 to full auto the way the San Bernardino killers apparently converted their semi-automatic AR 15s.
Of course, such conversions are quote illegal in the US and have been for decades.
But, what difference would it have made to the body count?
What matters in all these cases is how quickly the killer is confronted with armed opposition.
Comment by PV van der Byl — December 7, 2015 @ 11:54 am
PV van der Byl,
Three hundred others? 33 according to wikipedia…
I think it’s obvious that Breivik would have managed to kill (and certainly to injure) more people with a fully automatic weapon. That wasn’t really the point though: point being that he tried to obtain one and failed because of stricter gun control in Norway. This seems to directly refute the claims about gun control and terrorists made in the post.
Comment by mahmoud — December 8, 2015 @ 2:08 am
That wasn’t really the point though: point being that he tried to obtain one and failed because of stricter gun control in Norway.
It could just as easily be because there are not as many (legal or illegal) fully automatic weapons in Norway than there are in the US: gun control probably doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Comment by Tim Newman — December 8, 2015 @ 9:50 am
Tim,
Your contention that guns being available in lesser numbers probably has nothing to do with stricter gun laws strikes me as about as likely as that differences in drug legislation probably has nothing to do with marijuana being more readily available in Amsterdam than in Riyadh. Also, illegal fully automatic weapons are in fact plentiful in Europe, but them being illegal means that someone like Breivik – without connections to organized crime – has trouble finding a seller.
Comment by mahmoud — December 8, 2015 @ 12:01 pm
Your contention that guns being available in lesser numbers probably has nothing to do with stricter gun laws strikes me as about as likely as that differences in drug legislation probably has nothing to do with marijuana being more readily available in Amsterdam than in Riyadh.
I dunno. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand. Drugs are illegal in New York. Assaulting people outside nightclubs is illegal in Manchester. And how did prohibition work out in the USA, again?
There are any number of reasons – cultural, historical, geographical, demographical – why there are fewer fully automatic weapons in Norway than the USA which are a lot more convincing than your implication that gun control legislation accounts for the difference.
Comment by Tim Newman — December 9, 2015 @ 4:16 am
Tim,
First notice that I did not say that marijuana is nowhere to be found in Riyadh. Second notice that all the other examples you give involve activities that either do not require any form of technical tools/substances at all, or where such are easily manufactured (prohibition). I would think that illegal factories for assault rifle manufacturing are somewhat more cumbersome to set up than an illegal still. Third notice that laws (sometimes) are intended to change the cultural circumstances you are referring to. Sometimes unsuccessfully (prohibition), sometimes with a lot more success (corporal punishment of children). Fourth again consider what was my original point: even if automatic weapons are plentiful, it is still helpful to make them illegal.
Comment by mahmoud — December 9, 2015 @ 7:06 am