Bomb Doctors Sign of Radicalism's Reach

What would you think if, while conversing with an Iraqi Sunni sheikh at a meeting of sheikhs attempting to broker “peace” in Iraq, he began spewing a litany of anti-American rhetoric, warned you that militants would expand their operations to include direct attacks on Britain and America, and further warned you that “those who cure you will kill you?” Would that last phrase stand out in your mind? What would you conclude that the sheikh meant by his comment about “those who cure?”

You don’t have to be an intelligence specialist or counterterrorism expert to take the sheikh’s warning at face value and put two and two together, but apparently British Anglican cleric Canon Andrew White had difficulty seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. Instead of reporting the verbatim warning to the British Foreign Office in April, when the disturbing conversation occurred, White left out the statement “those who cure you will kill you,” and merely told authorities of the anti-American rhetoric at the meeting, warning in generic terms only that militants were going to target America and Britain directly.

White has received recognition from coalition forces in Iraq for his work among Iraqis and attempts to reconcile the various religious factions there. He was no stranger to radical ideology, having witnessed its brutality firsthand, and that is why it was stunning that he did not recognize the sheikh’s comments as a reference to doctors. White deserves standard kudos for reporting what little he did report to the British Foreign Office at the time, but unfortunately it took failed car bombings in London and Glasgow last week, and the subsequent arrests of 8 doctors, medical students, and laboratory technicians in Britain for it to dawn on White what the sheikh’s warning actually meant and to go public with his “discovery.” There is no question that had White shared the sheikh’s precise phrase with government authorities in April, British intelligence would have begun immediately to inquire with its informants about doctors or others in the medical profession and may very well have detected the London-Glasgow plot before its unsuccessfully execution last week.

The UK Telegraph reported today that the post-attack investigation has revealed that a group of 45 Muslim doctors may have participated in an extremist Internet chat room as long as three years ago in which they threatened to use car bombs to attack targets in the United States. One can only imagine how deeply British or American intelligence/counterterrorism agencies might have penetrated, or how closely they could have monitored such a group of doctors had they known of its existence as early as April of this year, when White first received an explicit warning about “those who cure.”

Yesterday I asked my wife, an astute thinker in her own right but who had not heard any coverage of White’s restored memory, to imagine what she would conclude if an anti-American Islamic sheikh told her “those who cure you will kill you.” She replied that not only would she immediately think of doctors, but that her concern would focus not on car bombs but rather on chemical/biological attacks that could be launched quietly through unsuspecting patients by doctors with access to biological and radiological materials. She was thinking of pandemics or radiation poisonings caused by doctors in whom Americans (or the British) would have placed their implicit trust for routine treatment, a much more frightening prospect than propane tank car bombs. Considering the large number of Muslim doctors in the United States, particularly in the Washington, DC area, it is possible that patients may reconsider their choice of doctor with the revelations of willing terrorists among the ranks of Muslim medical personnel in the west.

American and British Muslim physicians and medical staff may chafe at the suspicion and patient cancellations that are sure to come on the heels of current investigations into the London-Glasgow terror doctors. They may consider it unfair and unwarranted, but moderate Muslims, including respected physicians and other successful Muslim professionals, need to purge their own ranks of extremists like the eight medical personnel arrested since Friday’s initial botched bombing. Radio personality Fred Grandy posed a timely question to Muslims during the “Grandy and Andy Morning Show” today: “Where is the anti-Bin Laden? Where is the anti-al Zawahiri?” He explained that the world is mesmerized by each new videotaped statement by Bin Laden, but there is no corresponding moderate Muslim leader to issue rebuttals to Bin Laden or condemn his rhetoric and offer a better alternative for impressionable Muslims throughout the world.

The arrested doctors in Britain illustrate an important truth of radical Islam: it is not limited in social or educational status and has quiet support even among those who are supposedly dedicated to preserving life. It has followers in every profession, in every walk of life. When doctors, well-educated and engaged in a lucrative profession, are willing to throw away years of training and achievement by risking detonating themselves along with hundreds of innocent British or American citizens, radical Islam demonstrates the expanse of its reach and indoctrinating power. In its appeal to base human impulse, radicalism is more compelling than reason.

In an interesting concluding paragraph to its report of cleric White’s hindsight, CNN unintentionally published a compelling argument for America to remain engaged in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries until Islamic terrorists are dealt an ultimately fatal blow. Whether it meant to or not, CNN supported President Bush’s premise that “we are fighting the terrorists over there so we won’t have to fight them here.” From CNN’s report:

According to officials, there has been long-standing concern that Iraq is a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists who have been testing tactics of urban warfare, which can then be used in Western nations.

Terrorism analyst Marco Vicenzino, the director of the Global Strategy Project, says the world could be seeing a shift in jihadist tactics.

Confident after wounding the United States and its allies in Iraq, jihadists "are determined to take their combat experience directly to the superpower and its allies at home and around the world," Vicenzino said.

If the jihadists are “confident” after wounding the U.S. in Iraq, then it stands to reason that America’s response to a wounding should not be retreat, withdrawal, or “redeployment,” as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats have euphemistically recommended. Rather than allow an emboldened enemy to be confident, grow stronger, and launch widespread attacks, the enemy must be defeated and discouraged from ever attempting to “wound” America again. If they are determined, we must be doubly so. If they are confident of eventual victory, we must deny them of achieving it by dealing them defeat and crushing their capacity to strike us. If radical Islam is a disease slowly consuming the world even through the assistance of professional healers, and moderate Islam will not treat the disease devouring its ranks, who then holds the cure?

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Muslim Doctors, London Car Bombs, Radical Islam, Terrorism, Fred Grandy, Canon Andrew White, Iraq War, Muslim Medical Students, Moderate Muslims, Jihad