Ted Cruz Nails the Obama Administration’s Willful Blindness to Islamic Terrorism

Yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz conducted another hearing on the roots of Muslim terrorism in America. 

As Senator Cruz pointed out, “This year alone, the Obama administration has twice purged mentions of ‘ISIS’ and ‘Islamic terrorism’ from highly significant public records—one involving French President Hollande’s remarks about the Paris terror attacks and the other involving the terrorist’s 911 call during the horrific Orlando attack. The Administration was forced to abruptly reverse course when the public outcry became too great,” Sen. Cruz said in his opening statement. “We cannot combat and defeat radical Islamic terrorism without acknowledging it exists and directing our resources to stopping it. And an Orwellian double-think that seeks to excerpt any reference to it, as the Administration did to the President of France, or erase pledges of allegiance to ISIS, as the Administration did with the Orlando terrorist, is counterproductive to keeping this country safe.” 

Cruz went on to document that, “In 2011, the group ‘Muslim Advocates’ sent a letter to the Obama administration claiming the federal government had somehow become infected with ‘false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam,’ and demanding that such ‘bigoted and distorted materials’ be ‘purge[d]’—I would note that was their word, not mine ‘purged’—and was also advocating for the creation of an interagency task force to address this problem.  

“In a lightning quick response—a rather unusual occurrence in our bloated bureaucracy—current CIA director John Brennan, then the President’s Homeland Security adviser, agreed to create such a task force, and claimed that the federal government had indeed produced ‘offensive training’ that urgently needed to be dealt with in order to ‘reflect the vision that the President has put forward.’ Yet again, this subcommittee would like to discuss this critical issue of national security with the relevant officials from the Obama administration. After all, should it really be the top concern of counter-terrorism whether their efforts ‘offend’ anyone, rather than whether they work and keep Americans safe? Yet no one from this Administration is even willing to show up and defend their scrubbing of anti-terror materials.” 

The hearing was a Cruz tour de force as the Senator drilled down on Obama’s feckless Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, saying, “What concerns me, and I believe should concern the Department of Homeland Security, is that because of this effort—scrubbing your law enforcement materials of any acknowledgment of radical Islamic terrorism—when you see the red flags of radical Islamic terrorism, you do not follow up on them effectively. And we have terrorist attack, after terrorist attack, after terrorist attack that could have been prevented but for this Administration’s willful blindness.” 

To get the full impact of just how dangerous the Obama/Johnson policies are toward the primary sources of terrorism in America, which are Islam and Muslims, you really have to watch this video clip in which Johnson comes off as not only willfully blind, but as an arrogant jerk as well. 

That the Obama administration is full of arrogant jerks who are willfully blind to Muslim terrorism in America, and its roots and goals, is no longer a surprise—we’ve covered the revelations of DHS whistleblower Phil Haney (a witness at a Cruz hearing earlier this week) and the revelations by Stephen Coughlin in his book Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad documenting similar willful blindness at the Pentagon.  

As our friend Frank Gaffney, put it in his Secure Freedom Minute, released after the Cruz hearing, “In a Senate hearing yesterday, Secretary Johnson displayed ignorance of—and indifference to—the damning charges leveled by one of his former employees, whistleblower Philip Haney.  Mr. Haney has documented how official “see-no-Sharia” policies and purges are interfering with investigations, and allowing Americans to be killed.” 

Sec. Johnson said his Muslim interlocutors insist that “ISIS has hijacked my religion.” So, he’s focused on the “need to build bridges to American Muslim communities and not vilify them so they will help us help them.”  

This is beyond stupid. There are Muslims in America and across the globe who want no part of living in a Sharia-compliant society, but they are few and have been effectively shutout of the Obama /Jeh Johnson anti-terrorism effort because Obama and Johnson have made the enemy the arbiter of who can be part of the engagement process by anointing the Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. front groups as the sole legitimate representatives of the Muslim community in America. 

As Frank Gaffney put it so memorably, “The U.S. government is, indeed, ‘willfully blind’ about Sharia-supremacism and the danger it poses to America. Sen. Ted Cruz has established that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson could qualify for a seeing-eye dog—and why… These are the narratives of the Muslim Brotherhood, and proof-positive of their successful, subversive influence operations inside the Obama administration.”

George Rasley is editor of ConservativeHQ, a member of American MENSA and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2008. He served as lead advance representative for Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and has served as a staff member, consultant or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative Republican political figures, including President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. He served in policy and communications positions on the House and Senate staff, and during the George H.W. Bush administration he served on the White House staff of Vice President Dan Quayle.