Steve Emerson: I think interestingly enough that many of the militant Islamic groups have tried to stay away from violence [on American soil], even though they’ve carried out violence against American targets overseas largely — Beirut, Lebanon in ’83, the U.S.S. Cole — and they had the World Trade Center here. But they want to have the U.S. remain sort of a safe haven, so they can raise their funds, tens of millions of dollars tax free, where they can recruit. Look, I have conference transcripts that were held just in the past week, where they talked about Israel and the United States in the same language they used in Durban, but here they mentioned it in Chicago. And these are militant Islamic groups that meet routinely, here in the United States, literally three or four times a month, with upwards of 4 or 5,000 people attending. Nobody covers this, the media is thoroughly negligent in not reporting this.
Emerson: I think for the time being the pattern we see is to go after major military targets or diplomatic targets overseas, by and large in areas where we are exposed, where we can’t protect ourselves. And they’re going to find the weak spot, and you know that every single time you build a wall that’s 30 feet high they’re gonna find a bomb that goes 33 feet high.
Emerson: If you look at counter-terrorism or stopping terrorism as a series of concentric circles, you put a circle around yourself so you build a better wall, a better protective suit. You build better perimeters at the entry points of the United States. But the most effective counter-terrorist doctrine is to go after the terrorists themselves. And I think we make a big mistake in this country when we allow militant Islamic representatives to gather at the White House or at the State Department as was done repeatedly by the Clinton administration, which allowed the message of militant Islam to be legitimized. That’s the worst message we can give because that sends a message overseas that we’re weak. (cont.)