Posted on 05/08/2007 9:14:10 PM PDT by Ortsed
Experts surprised by make-up of alleged terror group
Philadelphia Inquirer
May. 8, 2007 05:23 PM
PHILADELPHIA - The alleged plot involving six men born outside the United States but living here legally and otherwise is richly detailed in anti-terrorist spy craft and less detailed about the plotters' motivation.
Experts in Islam, national security, the Balkans and the Middle East were surprised by the make-up of the group, which includes four ethnic Albanians born in the former Yugoslavia, one Turk and a U.S. citizen born in Jordan.
"To me, there's this great irony that you've got Albanians who want to attack the U.S. military, based on whatever reasoning. Of all the people I talk to in all the world, I haven't found anyone who loves the U.S. more than the Albanian community" because of the U.S.-led intervention against Serbian "ethnic cleansing" in the Albanian enclave of Kosovo, said Robert A. Saunders, an expert on political Islam at the State University of New York in Farmingdale.
Saunders, a resident of Monmouth County, N.J., lives about 15 miles from Fort Dix, which prosecutors described as the plotters' main target. Beginning in 1999, Fort Dix was a temporary resettlement point for Kosovar refugees fleeing the strife in their homeland.
In announcing the arrests Tuesday, the Justice Department described five of the members as "radical Islamists" and the sixth as a conduit for illegal guns.
The criminal complaint cites instances in which the men discussed killing U.S. soldiers and watched training videos in which "known foreign Islamic radicals" urged holy war against the United States, punctuated by shouts of "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great."
"We have to speculate that these (men) probably are being manipulated by the internationalist jihadist ideology - let's fight the infidel wherever we find him. It's obvious that this is not being done from the standpoint of Albanian nationalism," Saunders said.
Saunders said the phenomenon of home-grown Islamic radicalism is better known as a problem in Italy, Germany, Britain and other European countries.
"You've got second-generation Muslims, they are not immigrants because they were born there, but they are losing their ethnic, cultural and local identities ... and what they are left with is their religious identity," even if they are not particularly devout, he said. "It's not about religion. It's about politics. It is a political Muslim identity, it's not a religious Muslim identity."
In the case of the New Jersey men, "we may be dealing with a situation in which people are abandoning their old identity and embracing their Muslim identity, and this is how international jihad works," he said.
Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, said there are reported pockets of Muslim extremists in the Balkans.
"One hears of cells operating in Bosnia, but those consist either of foreigners or Bosnian Muslims, not Albanians," Kupchan said.
While emphasizing that he can only speculate because not much is known about the alleged plotters' motives, Kupchan said it was not likely that the planned attack was "payback for something the U.S. did in the Balkans."
"This more likely is a set of extremists motivated by the same concerns about what is going on in the Middle East that have driven Muslim extremism elsewhere," he said.
Which is why you will get hit again. There are no more experts on Islam than Christians who have had to live under the Muslim yoke. Naive pointy headed intellectual fops. The only reason the Kosovo Albanians show any love in public to Americans is because the Americans are the only force able to keep the Serbs from returning to their Kosovo homeland whenever they want.
Being a pointy headed intellectual does not make you an “expert”.
Being CORRECT makes you an expert.
This guy Saunders is obviously a dope.
The “experts” are two university professors with nary a clue, sitting in their cozy little offices and basking in the ego-glow of being consulted by a reporter who is even more clueless than they are. What a huge waste of perfectly good trees that newspaper is. We have now identified three of the 10 people in the United States who were “surprised” by these arrests.
So what? It's being done from the standpoint of Islamic Jihadism. If Sauders thinks that Muslim Albanians are somehow immune to that particular disorder he's in quite a bit of denial.
The guy still doesn't really get it.
Well, NSS! It hasn't been from the standpoint of anybody's nationalism since 1979. I am so weary of academia and academicians.
So, could someone tell these film and t.v. stars to please read the news???? Sadly, people are influenced by their blather.
Rosie O’ Donnell says steel can’t be melt?? Please look at pictures of the roadway that was decimated in California by little more than a truck crash.
I have heard many politicians and these “influential” people state that there is no threat from terrorists. No Big deal. It’s all hype.
Of course the MSM will minimize this. That is shameful.
This guy commutes the Belt Parkway every day. Every single day he wakes up in his nice little suburban home in Monmouth county NJ, gets in his car, drives through Staten island and south east Brooklyn, on his way to his comfortable little office and lecture hall at SUNY Farmingdale. He gives his best to study Islam, gives his lectures, grades his papers. he then gets back in his car and drives back through south Brooklyn, complains about the traffic, gets over the bridge, and drives into his nice suburban driveway in Monmouth county NJ.
This oblivious pinhead has absolutely no freaking idea how radicalized the young Albanian male population of south Brooklyn and Staten Island have become as they have been forced into close proximity to the radical clerics and religious fanatics that control almost every Muslim civic organization in those areas.
How can an academic so removed from the men involved, and the realities of his immediate surroundings, even opine a suggestion he can see their inner heart of hearts?
I’m not surprised... and I’m an expert, because the experts are wrong more often than I... or is it me?
foreigners are the problem!!
This lefty can't even bring himself to say the WORD "ILLEGAL" instead he uses the word "OTHERWISE".
Pathetic leftists have no friggin clue what we are up against with fanatical Islamists!!
“Experts in Islam, national security, the Balkans and the Middle East were surprised by the make-up of the group..”
That’s the whole problem; every swinging d*ck who is a highly paid member of a “think tank” or Ivy League gradute calls himself an expert? I put my faith in freepers.
I would say they aren't experts if they were surprised. Sanders needs to try observing reality sometimes instead of believing these naive intellectual constructs created by ivory tower pinheads.
Saunders is a faux prajna.
“This more likely is a set of extremists motivated by the same concerns about what is going on in the Middle East that have driven Muslim extremism elsewhere,” he said.
Of course, it has to be our fault.
An “expert” today is nothing other than an academic
who said some things that a bunch of liberals wanted to hear;
and even after their ignorance is apparent
in the reality of current events that “surprise” them
(because they are not really “expert” in the classic sense),
their friends in the media, academia and other leftist circles
will make sure their “expert” status will not falter.
Liar.
speculate?
Speculate??
SPECULATE?????
No, we DON'T have to speculate. We know. Jihadism is here and rampant in the mosques being built with Saudi money all over our country.
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