Opinion: U.S. Must Acknowledge Terrorist Threat in Islam, Not Bow to "Political Correctness"

July 15, 2005

Source: The Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050714-082637-5504r.htm

On July 15, 2005 The Washington Times ran an opinion piece by Douglas MacKinnon, who served as press secretary to former Sen. Bob Dole and is a former White House and Pentagon official, on the July 7 bombings in London. MacKinnon writes, "Sooner or later, political correctness is going to cause the death of hundreds or even thousands of Americans. These potentially avoidable deaths and injuries will come about because our law enforcement and intelligence agencies — out of fear of certain politicians on the left, the ACLU and the media that supports them — will continue to ignore, play down or outright reject the obvious. The obvious being that the terrorists who mean to strike into our homeland will only come from one source: the Muslim faith... Estimates are that there are as many as 6 million Muslim Americans living in the United States. Should one percent of that number sympathize with al Qaeda or other terrorists, then you are talking about 60,000 individuals. Let's give a very reasonable benefit of the doubt and say that 99.9 percent of all Muslim Americans are disgusted by the heinous crimes being committed by these terrorists. With that almost absolute number, there still could be 6,000 Muslims, already in our nation who support the obscene. Six thousand... Terrorism can be defeated. But only if we acknowledge the obvious."