Thomas Wictor

I just read a very depressing article about Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, the two Muslim terrorists who murdered fourteen at a San Bernardino County Public Health Department Christmas party on December 2, 2015. We’ve become a nation of blathering mush-heads afraid to “judge.” That’s why we use the utterly inappropriate term “radical.” It relieves us of having to say “terrorist.”

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - The married couple responsible for the San Bernardino shooting participated in target practice, including once within days of the attack that killed 14 people, the FBI announced Monday.

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said at a news conference Monday that Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, participated in target practice at ranges within the Los Angeles area…

The FBI said Monday said the couple were radicalized and had been “for some time,” although officials don’t know when or whether anyone else radicalized them.

Five days after two Muslims murdered fourteen and wounded twenty-one, the FBI says they were “radicalized,” but they don’t know if it was auto-radicalization or extrinsic-radicalization.

The radicalism doesn’t matter. It’s the terrorism that kills us.

I’ve been reading lots and lots of nonsense about how to combat “radical Muslim extremism” with competing messages. Nobody seems to understand that a maniacal believer of a murderous ideology is by definition unreachable. The only thing that will stop people from becoming Muslim terrorists is much more of this.

Give war a chance.

This was a Kurdish blitz assault on a town held by the Islamic State. Somehow the Kurds managed to silently sneak up in their armored vehicles and kill the sentries, who were having lunch in Styrofoam takeout containers.

The Islamic State sentries were jocked up in special-operations gear.

Weapons and equipment are useless without training.

Somebody carried out pinpoint air strikes with 500 lb (227 kg) bombs.

It wasn’t the US, because that level of precision requires a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC)—an airman who directs air strikes and close air support—to be on the front lines, embedded with the foremost ground troops. American JTACs in Iraq are consigned to Joint Operations Centers (JOCs) in the rear, trying to direct attacks by using video feed from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It’s moot anyway, because the US won’t bomb towns for fear of killing civilians.

Since there were Kurdish ground forces in the area, no commander would agree to use only UAVs to direct air strikes. The chances of fratricide—killing your own troops—would be too great. So somebody other than the US had JTACs embedded with the Kurds, and somebody other than the US dropped the bombs.

Somebody also fired antitank guided missiles (ATGMs) from very close range.

In the video the Kurds use the French MILAN ATGM, which must be set up on a tripod.

They destroyed a massive, armored suicide truck, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).

Because somebody had already embedded JTACS with the Kurds, my guess is that the close-range ATGM was a Javelin or another model that can be quickly fired by one man holding the launcher on his shoulder.

Therefore special-operations troops were attached to the Kurds. Beginning at 2:45 in the video above, you can hear what sounds like heavy machine-gun fire, each detonation followed by a whooshing sound. I can’t identify the weapon, and the Kurds were careful to not film it. More new technology? You can also hear the unmistakable sound of the Central Wisconsin Armory Dragon M50 machine gun. It’s sold to a Middle Eastern nation, but the name is classified.

The special operators helping the Kurds were either Saudi or Emirati. That video shows that they were armed with a massive number of automatic weapons and rocket launchers.

Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon (SMAW).

Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle.

AT-4 single-shot antitank weapon.

M72 LAW (light antitank weapon).

A special-forces company of just 100 men could destroy an entire city.

In July of 2014, the Kurds created a unit of female special operators. They trained in Saudi and Emirati digital desert camouflage.

To the right in the photo above, under the red arrow, is a male Saudi instructor.

The Saudis trained female Yemeni special operators as well.

In the Middle East, female Muslim commandos are incalculably valuable assets. Because of cultural and religious mores, they’re virtually undetectable.

This is why I’m optimistic about the future of the region. I believe that there has been a sea change. It has to remain hidden for now, but it’s real.

Ideology isn’t the problem. Terrorism is. We will never convince people that their ideology is wrong. What we have to do is convince them that if they engage in terrorism, we’ll kill them.

In my city, all the 7-Eleven convenience stores were owned by South Korean immigrants for years. Around 2002 Indian immigrants began buying the franchises, and by 2010 the new bosses hired only Nepalese and Pakistanis. All of them are extremely educated and speak fluent English. I got to know a Pakistani quite well. He was funny, intelligent, a family man, and he was very empathetic to the deaths of my parents.

He was also a radical Muslim extremist, as I discovered to my sorrow.

I never discuss religion with strangers, and I never bring up geopolitics with Muslims. All of us are bombarded daily with bad news, so I don’t like to immediately put up a barrier between me and others who happen to have a different belief system.

But one day my Pakistani friend began talking to me about religion in a general way. He wanted to know my own beliefs. I told him that this was private, which hurt his feelings. That made me feel guilty, so I asked if he was a Sunni or a Shi’ite.

He looked horrified. “There’s no such thing as Shi’ite Islam,” he said. “Whenever there are good people, evil forces attack them. So-called Shia Islam was made up as part of an evil conspiracy to discredit good Muslims.”

Although I knew the answer, I asked anyway. “Who’s behind this conspiracy?”

“The Jews, of course.”

I let him ramble on about rejectors (Rafidah), and then I left and never went back. It’s simply not possible for me to have people like that in my life. He’s a radical Muslim extremist. But he’s not a terrorist. In fact he once criticized Islamic terrorism without qualification and without prompting from me.

“Terrorists make me ashamed to be a Muslim,” he said. “Murdering, torturing, and raping in the name of Islam? I can’t comprehend it. They all need to be killed. They’re fanatics who can’t be saved.”

He’s right. And he’s also a radical Muslim extremist.

Do you see my point? It doesn’t matter what people think, as long as they don’t commit crimes. We’re not at war with radical Muslim extremism. We’re at war with Muslim terrorists. The only way we’re going to win is by defeating them militarily. Syed Rizwan Farook’s father is a radical Muslim extremist, but he gets it.

I told [my precious son Syed Rizwan] he had to stay calm and be patient because in two years Israel will not exist any more. Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China and America don’t want Jews there any more. They are going to bring the Jews back to Ukraine. What is the point of fighting? We have already done it and we lost. Israel is not to be fought with weapons, but with politics.

He believes that the US will deport all the Jews from Israel in two years. Do Israelis really care about the thoughts of a Pakistani lunatic who wears dress shirts that still have creases from when they were folded in the factory?

This is what will stop Muslim terrorism.

But there’s more.

Law enforcement is not bound by the Geneva Conventions. Police officers are therefore free to use unimaginably lethal ammunition. There’s a photo of Syed Rizwan Farook lying dead in the street. A bullet hit him in the back of the head and exploded from his left eye socket, blowing out his brains. However, his right eye is wide open, gazing directly at the camera. He looks exactly like Robert De Niro in the “You talkin’ to me?” scene in Taxi Driver.

I won’t link to the photo. Google “crime scene Syed Farook” without the quotation marks. The first result should be the site “Documenting Reality.”

The reason I won’t link to the photo is that it won’t dissuade potential terrorists, and I don’t approve of using dead people as click bait or entertainment. While I don’t condemn others for posting the image, I can’t do it myself. There’s nothing to celebrate here. It’s a godawful catastrophe. However, the police did the right thing.

No more yapping about “radical Muslim extremism.” Muslim terrorists are the ones who must be defeated. The only way to do it is by killing them in such large numbers that they stop waging war on us.