By now everyone knows: as many as 300 Americans are, as the Constitution would put it, “levying war against the United States.” The Arabic, or at least Muslim, word is jihad. The Latinate word, and the Constitutional word, is treason. Now we must ask why. Why should so many young men go to the Middle East to wage jihad, against the United States or any other country? That question might have as many answers as the countries they come from. But the American answer is all too clear.

American jihad – the latest

The “Islamic State” is more than an army-without-a-country now. They have a country. They have carved it out of Iraq and Syria. And by dropping the “in Iraq and Syria” from their name they said what they really mean. They mean to conquer the world in the name of Allah. So the Koran demands. So the Prophet Muhammad told his spiritual posterity to do.

First came the video in which a British jihad warrior cut off a reporter’s head. (That reporter himself might have gone to the Middle East to cheer-lead for the Islamic State. If so, that body’s soldiers decided they could do better spilling his blood than turning him into a modern Lord Haw-haw.) Then we heard of Douglas MacArthur McCain (if that’s his real name). (The Middle East Media Research Institute says elements of the Free Syrian Army killed this man.) And by the way: he was not the first. Nor the last: another man named Abdirahmaan Muhumed turned up dead in Syria also. (Possibly the FSA killed him, too.) These men grew up in the same suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This suburb has the dubious nickname of Little Mogadishu. Even so, these men were not recent immigrants. They grew up here, on American soil. Fifty years ago that might have counted for something. Not any more, it seems. Muhumed kept a page on Facebook, and posted this to a reporter’s “wall”:

I give up this worldly life for Allah. Allah loves those who fight for his cause.

Muhumed took seriously the literal meaning of jihad: holy war against anything non-Muslim. But he forgot the other word for what he set out to do.

Jihad and treason

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines treason as:

the crime of trying to overthrow your country’s government or of helping your country’s enemies during war.

The Constitution also defines treason. It has to, to say what a prosecutor may call it:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

The US Constitution. Photo: National Archives of the United States

Defining words like jihad and treason are all very well. But why does anyone betray his country? And for a dead-end cause like jihad? After all, jihad defines itself only by what one fights against, not by what one fights for.

One betrays one’s country, after one decides one has no opportunity, or one thinks one has a better opportunity from outside the country. That gives the clue to the problem.

And: one man might commit treason for a private motive. That’s why Benedict Arnold did what he did. But when hundreds of men commit treason, especially for the dead end that is jihad, the cause must lie elsewhere. To paraphrase the late Ian Fleming: once is an isolated instance, twice is an unhappy coincidence, and the third time it’s a disease. A social disease.

Obama as the cause of jihad

How is Obama the cause of jihad? Because he is the latest cause of the social disease that drives American men to jihad. That disease has two causes: lack of opportunity, and another pretended opportunity.

Lack of opportunity

Kevin Jackson, at The Black Sphere, addresses lack of opportunity. It didn’t start with Obama. But Obama promised to do something about it, and he hasn’t.

Frustrated young black men are avoiding the “School to Prison” program, and just heading straight to Jihad, likely because there are no more virgins left in their neck of the woods.

Life sucks then you die, as the saying goes, because young black men find more hope living in a Third-World armpit, than they do in their own backyards.

The crescent moon and star of Islam

That alone would convict this (de facto) President of negligence. Remember the four degrees of mens rea under tort law: negligence, recklessness, knowledge and intent. Jackson goes further: he accuses Obama, and others before him and working beside him, of saying blacks can never succeed, when they can. That is a reckless thing to say.

None of this would convict Obama or his administration of knowingly or intentionally selling jihad to American men of any race. But this next item might.

Selling another opportunity

How does Obama offer jihad as a good “second choice”? By telling Muslims, “I am one of you.” By saying the future does not belong to those who “slander” Muslims. (Slander does not occur when one tells the truth. Obama the lawyer seems to have forgotten that. Truth is a complete defense to a complaint of the torts of libel and slander.)

And what shall we call this? Only yesterday the government sued the Minnesota suburb called St. Anthony Village for refusing to let Muslims set up a “center” in the basement of a building it owned.

Religious freedom is one of our most cherished rights, and there are few aspects of that right more central than the ability of communities to establish places for collective worship.

Hogwash. Had St. Anthony Village let a church set up shop in that basement, this same United States Attorney would have sued over that. He would have alleged a breach of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The federal government can imply only one thing by such acts. They prefer Islam over Christianity.

Now what kind of administration, and what kind of (de jure or de facto) chief executive, prefers an ideology that exhorts its adherents to treason? At least a reckless executive. At worst, a traitor himself.

Summary

Clearly this (de facto) President supports jihad. But is that support negligent, reckless, knowing, or intentional? How serious does the mens rea reach? Serious enough, at least, for voters everywhere to withdraw from this (de facto) President as much support as they can withdraw. How? By removing as many of his supporters as they can from the House and Senate through simple electoral defeat.

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