Dakota Beacon

We are at war. Does anyone doubt this? Granted, it is a strange sort of war with individual “soldiers” acting out on their own without any obvious organization, although we can be assured that there is a plan behind it. We are in the midst of a new kind of “asymmetrical” warfare, where the civilized, western world culture is under relentless attack by Islam, people acting in concert and people acting as lone jihadis, taking to heart instructions such as the call to action by Syrian ISIS leader, Abu al Adnani, in 2014, who suggested that individual Muslims kill infidels with anything that came to hand, be it a knife, a bludgeon, a vehicle, etc. He specifically called on them to take the initiative and kill opportunistically without waiting for “orders” and without necessarily acting together with any movement.

This makes this kind of warfare extremely unpredictable and dangerous for ordinary citizens, who maybe be shopping for groceries or picking out a paint color in a Walmart (as might have happened in Grand Forks a couple of years go), or attending a class at a university. Military bases have also been targets. No one should ever forget the Ft. Hood massacre, and others have been undertaken but thwarted since then. Today, however, we were not quite so lucky. Again, an American military base in our own country was attacked, this time by a Saudi National who was “studying aviation” at our Naval Air Base there, the home of our Naval Air program and our famous Blue Angels flight team.

A member of the Saudi military, Second Lt. Mohammed Shaeed al Shamrani, shot and killed three Americans and injured eight more. It was determined to be “an act of terrorism” rather than “workplace violence”, according to Base Commander, Capt. Timothy Kinsella. Yeah, I guess.

Here’s a question. Given the FACT that we are under constant attack by Islam, organized and random, does it make any sense at all for us to allow foreign students – especially students from Islamic-controlled countries – to study ANYTHING here, much less military, computer, aerospace or other technical disciplines? Sure, colleges make a lot of money doing this. It is a point of great pride with UND’s well-known John D. Odegaard School of Aerospace Studies. It has been considered a bit of a cash cow over the years. But this is a dangerous practice.

The attack on the Twin Towers (if you still believe they came down from being hit by an airplane) was carried out by Saudi terrorists. Our then-president, George W. Bush, allowed bin Laden, one of the several involved, free passage out of the U.S. Some of us still wonder about that. But the Saudis have been involved in terrorism on our soil for two decades. One of the pilots in the coordinated attack that day was Hani Hanjour. Hanjour studied English as a second language at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He returned to Saudi Arabia and then came back to study flight training in Arizona, receiving his commercial pilot’s license there. It was his plane which flew into the Pentagon and killed 125 that fateful day. But he was not the only one.

He had attended Sawyer Aviation there, along with a few other notables – Bandar al Hamzi, Gharssan al Shardbi, Faisal al Salmi and Lotfi Raisi. Undoubtedly, we are currently training terrorists today in our schools and military bases who will one day in the not-distant future kill more Americans.

Why do we allow this? Why was this Saudi Second Lt. Mohammed Shaeed al Shamrani allowed anywhere near our military bases? Let alone train there? Who authorized this?  Why, in fact are we allowing Islamic military personnel into the United States at all? It is as though we are the only ones who don’t know we are at war.

What if, during WWII, our colleges and commercial flight schools and military schools were letting Japanese military and naval personnel study there? Or Hitler’s German officers? Are we crazy or what?

For now everything is all hunky-dory. King Salman of Saudi Arabia made it all better by calling President Trump, who is thinking of some way to craft a “deal” where victims of this incident can be paid off by the Saudi government. Oh, that makes it ok, I guess. After all, King Salman is probably a “great guy” too, just like Xi Jinping. Too bad the three dead victims can’t get anything out of this deal. But King Salman assures us he’s “sorry”.

The only deal that makes any sense to a thinking person, however, is a deal whereby we stop admitting these foreign nationals into our training programs . . . or better yet, quit giving them visas to even get into the U.S. in the first place. Sure, our schools would take a financial hit for a while. They have built themselves up to reap a major profit from this trade. But is it worth it? What, aside from the profits to schools, does America gain from bringing these people in here to train? Train for what?

Our naval base at Pensacola presumably is an installation there for our protection, right? Protection against what, exactly? It seems that without question, the greatest threat we need protection from is Islam. Can someone please explain to me any legitimate reason for allowing members of foreign military forces onto our bases?

I don’t know whether a deal-maker like Trump would have done anything with Sawyer Aviation, but maybe they should be sued. Maybe UND’s Aerospace program should be sued if, at some point, they train someone who then kills an American. Maybe only the mighty dollar matters to any of these entities. If we don’t make someone accountable and/or change our policies in our own country we will see more of this. And we will deserve it.

Maybe we should work to get legislation passed that no foreign military personnel be allowed to enter a U.S. military base, unless, perhaps, such a person is physically accompanied by the President of the United States.

By the way, things could have been much, much worse.  What if Mohammed, instead of a shoot-'em-up had just taken a plane up and strafed a Seminoles game?  Think about it.

Oh, and by the way, guns aren’t allowed on the base. So this couldn’t have happened, right? Just thought you’d feel better knowing that.

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