The U.S. is about to enter a war against an enemy that has no capability or apparently even the desire to attack the United States. In fact, as the BBC reported, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “acknowledged that his organisation was not equipped to attack the Americans at home.” Furthermore, the U.S. government itself isn’t even claiming that they are actively planning attacks against the U.S.
- President Obama (9/10): “We have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland.”
- White House National Security advisor Tony Blinken (8/8): “their focus is not on attacking the U.S. homeland or attacking our interests here in the United States or abroad.”
- Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey (8/25): There is no sign that the Islamic State militants are engaged in “active plotting against the homeland.”
- Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (9/16): “The intelligence community has not yet detected specific plotting against the U.S. homeland”
- National Counterterrorism Chief Matthew Olsen (9/3): “We have no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the United States.”
- Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Nicholas Rasmussen (9/10): “Right now, we assess they do not have active ongoing plots aimed at the U.S. homeland.”
- Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (9/10): “We know of no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the homeland at present.”
- Undersecretary of Department of Homeland Security Francis Taylor (9/11): “At present, DHS is unaware of any specific, credible threat to the U.S. homeland from ISIL.”
- State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf (8/19), “We should look at each individual terrorist group and what they’re focused on, whether it’s homeland plotting, what the capabilities are. We haven’t seen that coming out of ISIS.”
- Former-Obama State Department Counterterrorism Chief Daniel Benjamin (9/11): The ISIS threat has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified…. all on the basis of no corroborated information.”
America is once again engaging in “preventative” warfare and entering a conflict–a civil war–with no evidence that our nation is threatened by it. Involving the nation in unnecessary fights is a perfect way to make America less safe, not more.