Winning: Trump national security strategy restores reference to ‘jihadist’ terror threat
Dec 18, 2017 11:30 am By Robert Spencer 12 Comments
“The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations.”
At last, reality begins to return to the U.S.’s counterterror strategy, after its removal in 2011, which I detail at length in my book Arab Winter Comes to America. Obama, at the behest of Muslim groups linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, removed all mention of Islam from counterterror training, rendering law enforcement and intelligence officials ignorant of the motives and goals of the people they were trying to counter.
But now, finally, all that is beginning to be rolled back.
“Trump national security strategy restores reference to ‘jihadist’ terror threat,” by Judson Berger, Fox News, December 18, 2017:
President Trump’s national security strategy, set to be unveiled in a major address Monday afternoon, restores references to the “jihadist” terror threat – in a tacit rebuke to the Obama-era decision to avoid such language.
The president is expected to detail his administration’s strategy at 2 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C.
Trump is expected to discuss threats he’ll deem as “rogue regimes,” like North Korea, and “revisionist powers,” like Russia and China, who aim to change the status quo.
But notably, the document repeatedly refers to “jihadist” terror groups, in a break from the Obama administration.
“The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations,” the document states, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech.
Another section calls for strengthened missile defense and homeland security, vowing to “pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders.”
Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump White House adviser, drew attention to the term in an interview Monday morning with “Fox & Friends.”
“The political correctness of the last eight years is gone,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything like this for 20-25 years.”
Then-President Barack Obama stirred controversy when he first removed terms like “Islamic extremism” in the 2010 security document, effectively scrubbing language used by the George W. Bush administration. The shift came on the heels of Obama’s visit to Egypt, where he vowed a “new beginning” in the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world.
The administration’s 2015 strategy also did not contain the word “jihadist.”…
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