On the eve of 9/11 The Bipartisan Policy Center released this report* entitled ‘Assessing the Terrorist Threat’ about the biggest threat to America now isn’t Islamic extremists who slip into the US and fly planes into buildings.   The threat now is from Islamic supremacists in our midst, including former refugees.

I found this story on a Somali on-line publication called Duhur, but it’s a Star Tribune story that Duhur doesn’t credit or link.

The article discusses the on-going saga of the Somali missing youths, a story we began following in earnest here in 2008.  If you are new to the story, read the article or review our dozens and dozens of posts on the subject. 

This made me laugh:

But, but, but we thought the magic melting pot would work!

Officials have believed that the nation’s melting pot of nationalities and religions would protect it from internal radical strife, the report said.

‘Fundamentally troubling’

The terrorists, said the report, may have discovered America’s “Achilles heel in that we currently have no strategy to counter the type of threat posed by homegrown terrorists and other radicalized recruits.”

“It is fundamentally troubling, given this collection of new threats and new adversaries directly targeting America, that there remains no federal government agency or department specifically charged with identifying radicalization and interdicting the recruitment of U.S. citizens or residents for terrorism. … America is thus vulnerable to a threat that is not only diversifying, but arguably intensifying.”

Federal officials have acknowledged the need to address the radicalization problem, and for the first time, the White House this year added combating homegrown terrorism to its national security strategy.

According to the report, “as the ranks of U.S. recruits have grown, the new front lines have become the streets of Bridgeport, Denver, Minneapolis and other big and small communities across America.”

I’ve been reading and studying about Islamic supremacism and the Islamic Jihad imperative for the last five years or so and I can assure you that experts like Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, Steve Emerson at The Investigative Project on Terrorism and Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs (among many other excellent investigators in the anti-Jihad movement) have been warning the federal government about this since before 9/11.  They must all be saying, ‘told you so!’  

Waaaahhh!  If only we had resources (your tax dollars) the Somali youths wouldn’t be leaving for Jihad training.

Many Americans, and especially American reporters, simply can’t get past their erroneous idea that Islamic radicalism comes from poverty rather than from the Jihad imperative of Islam itself.  See this last section of the Star Tribune piece:

Still, communication and understanding may not be enough, said Abdirizak Bihi, head of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center in Minneapolis. The seeds of radicalization may be sown in the hopelessness felt by Somali youth here.

An uncle of a Minneapolis man killed in Somalia, Bihi has been working to give local Somalis alternatives to the seduction of Al-Shabab. But winning the hearts and minds of young Somalis has been stymied by a lack of resources and a seeming indifference on the part of local public officials, he said.

For the past few days, he’s been trying scrounge up enough cash to keep a gym open for basketball.

“It all comes down to resources. There are no resources for Somali-American youth,” he said. “Eighty percent of them who are employable are unemployed. They are isolated from their own community and from the larger community.

Abdirizak Bihi knows better, he is a sensible man.  We have written about him on many previous occasions (archive for posts mentioning Bihi is here).  He knows and we know that available basketball courts do not trump the religious imperative to join the Jihad!

* The report will be downloaded into your computer, so if you don’t want to see the whole report, skip the download.