Come to Houston. It is generally obvious who is muslim and who is not.
Fine. The economy is a big short term problem. Islam is a mortal and final problem. Maybe we can agree on that.
Do not believe anything you read about the CIA. Both congress and the executive blame things on the Agency all the time knowing full well it will not defend itself publically. Further the Agency doesn’t make policy, takes no part in any kind of propaganda operations directed internally, and has little part in anyone’s perceptions of bogeymen. The agency runs very little in the way of operations any longer and is almost never given the green light to destabilize a government for example.
The President sets policy. Period. Case officers do what they are told, assuming the orders are lawful. They might think the president is an idiot, they might try in limited ways to minimize the damage, and if it gets bad enough they might resign. No different than the military.
I suspect there were a lot of resignations over Syrian policy. I hope so.
You seem to want to minimize the danger of islam because of the stupidity and naivete of the Bushes and the calculated damage being done by obutthole.
The Bushes were not looking to create bogeymen. They mis-identified a threat, created poorly rationalized action plans, and executed. They wasted vast amounts of blood and treasure.
obutthole is acting according to plan. He doesn’t much care about perceived bogeymen except for law enforcement, Christian bakers, and any other force for good.
Islamic agitation and oppression follow very predictable patterns based on percentage of population.
The real danger isn’t from savages in the ME. It is from the 12 million muslims here. The peaceful ones. The currently peaceful ones. It is a ticking time bomb. Just wait until they get to 20 percent of the population. A bad economy will be the least of your worries.
Help me out here. Recalling the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson affair, it sure looked like the Agency had a partisan agenda. Or, at the very least, a group of folks inside the Agency had a partisan agenda...and were allowed to pursue it.
I know what you mean about Houston. In both the place I worked and the place I live (Portland, ME and Springfield MA) we got a bunch of Somali refugees. It is very clear.
In Springfield, the mosque is growing by leaps and bounds.
We can agree that the precepts of Islam are concerning as their birth rate increase.
One of the reasons I am not as concerned about here as I am for Europe is that, for the most part, the “man on the street” is not racist, is religiously tolerant, and NOT politically correct.
The place where the political correctness has gone nuts is academia and government. MOST people have very little to do with either and MOST people coming out of colleges don’t buy their crap to begin with. Of course, if one relies on just the media they will have a different concept. It takes talking to real people over a range of economic classes.
Using my environment as an example, the local urban area (Springfield, MA) has become a cesspool of gangs, opiate use, and drug crimes. Based on my contacts with local law enforcement, the guns are coming up from the south (meaning anything south or west of PA.) They tend to be brought up with the drugs which originate with the cartels.
There is massive unemployment here, no real future for job growth, and schools which are under performing.
As I mentioned, the muslim community here is probably the only bright star in that area. They never get arrested. They work hard. They are educated. Their families are nice. They are assimilated. While they maintain their dress codes and manners of public adherence they have, for all intents and purposes assimilated.
Granted, the flavor of Islam in my area is mostly black muslims. There are few immigrants from the Russian/Baltic/African version of Islam. As a general statement, I do not hear or see much militancy. I am deeply connected with local law enforcement, emergency services, and members of the FBI.
Locally, they tell me that the Islamist here are probably the least of their problems. But they do keep an “eye” on the immigrant population. Around here, we have a growing Russian Orthodox immigrant community.
I am sure that the CIA, like all other government agencies, are filled with work-a-day people who are earnest and committed to their jobs. When I worked in the corporate world, I used to live by the axiom that nobody goes to working trying to do a crappy job I don’t put a lot of faith in the spy novels I read to give me a good reading on how our intelligence world operates. So, you have won me over on that point. (see I am not pig-headed! ha ha.)
(BTW, Muslim population in that community is about 4%.)
It will be some time before they are at 10% or more.
MY theory on what is going to spark the powder keg around here is going to be a sudden shock to the economic system which forces the existing, well integrated, middle class downward. By that I mean, young couples will be forced to either take in their parents or be forced to move into their parents house as they can no longer afford to live on their own due to downsizing or cutting of benefits.
The way this will force the issue is that most of the local “white” families are “local” in that they can consolidate a household without leaving the area. They have support systems of parents, siblings, and other family members.
The non-white situation is not so good. They do not have that support system locally. That is going to cause a “panic” (and I use that term cautiously—perhaps slow boil at first, then a panic) as benefits are cut, jobs are lost, savings are lost, and the general “gimme-dat” situation declines.
In my area that could be as much a result of a default in Puerto Rico, which forces THEM to come here.
In MY scenario, the Islamic group would “protect their own”, just as the Jews used to do (and Baptists, Methodists, etc). After that “panic”, they would emerge stronger and more in control of the economic power in the area. ONLY then, do I see any militancy getting to be a concern.
I dont see a doomsday scenario in the near future. No SHTF in the prepper sense of the word. I DO see a local economic depression that could cause local issues as the gangs fight for turf.
A long answer to explain my thought process.