Was Baltimore a test run? Regardless, Americans need to be ready for a terrorist attack on our country

Original article here.

While there are varying opinions on what exactly caused a cargo ship to slam into a support pier on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore earlier this week, one thing has become very evident. A significant portion of the American population doesn’t believe a word coming out of the federal government.

A lot of Americans have long feared a major terrorist attack on our country is inevitable, and with every bizarre transportation-related event that occurs, those fears have become more pronounced.

Last weekend in Moscow, just four alleged jihadi terrorists attacked a music venue, killing at least 137 people. These terrorists have the same mindset as the Hamas savages who murdered at least 1,200 Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, 2023. And in both cases, Russia and Israel have mostly secure borders.

So what then of the United States? A report in PJ Media by Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer paints a chilling picture of the escalating dangers facing the United States.

Since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, an estimated eight million or more illegal aliens have crossed into our country at the southern border. By and large, we have no idea who most of those people are. We do know that 169 people on the FBI’s terror watch list were caught at the border in 2023, but we have no clue how many evaded capture.

The United States, under the Biden administration, is ripe for the picking. While the administration focuses on taking away gun rights from law-abiding citizens and jailing political opponents, they have their intelligence agencies avoid using the term “jihadist” in describing terrorists such as those who struck Moscow out of fear of being accused of being “Islamophobic.”

As Spencer wrote, “…our intelligence and law enforcement officials are not allowed to notice, or study their [jihadists] motives and goals, for such study would lead them inexorably into the examination of Islam.”

We’ve already seen where the administration’s priorities are by how they’re handling the situation in Gaza. Instead of backing our strongest ally in the Middle East, Israel, the Biden administration is more concerned with courting votes in Dearborn, Michigan, home of the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S.

It spoke volumes this week when the United States abstained from a vote in the U.N. National Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a move that will hamstring Israel’s ability to defend itself. By abstaining, the United States allowed the measure to pass without having the guts to take a stand one way or the other.

Spencer notes that while the answer seems simple–”vote the bums out” by getting rid of Democrats–Republicans are no sure bet either. Despite the fact that there have been 44,000 jihadi attacks worldwide since September 11, 2001, even many Republicans don’t have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to radical Islam.

There is also the issue of our Department of Justice and intelligence apparatus. Simply put, many Americans no longer trust the DOJ-run FBI or the CIA, the latter of which anyone with a dash of common sense would have long ago discarded as a worthwhile organization.

This brings us to the revamped effort to go after lawful gun owners. Since George Floyd’s death was conveniently laid upon four Minneapolis police officers despite questions of a drug overdose, far-left Democrats and their neo-Marxist supporters have made it their life’s mission to target law enforcement to the detriment of our country.

Despite a lot of bloviating about “crime rates are down,” the fact is crime rates are down because Marxist left prosecutors have stopped enforcing the law. Police officers, tired of being painted as the bad guys, have often looked the other way, while many have either retired early or simply quit.

With that in mind, Americans are increasingly being put in a position of having to defend themselves, often to their detriment. The Daniel Penny case in New York City offers a stark reminder of whose side the criminal justice system (or at least the leftist criminal justice system) is on.

Penny, you may recall, was arrested in Manhattan after he placed an unhinged lunatic who was attacking riders on a city subway in a chokehold to restrain him. The man, Jordan Neely, ended up dying. Penny stands accused of manslaughter for defending a subway train full of commuters from an unhinged lunatic with no police officers aboard that train. Penny will stand trial in October.

The right to self-defense has always been a centerpiece of our criminal justice system and way of life. Spencer reminds us that it was the alertness of regular citizens that helped foil some major jihadist attacks, including the so-called “shoe bomber” and “underwear bomber,” two incidents that exposed the ineptitude of our airport security apparatus.

While today, American citizens are still forced to endure having to remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints and make sure their shampoo bottles are under the correct size, illegal aliens have their own lane at TSA checkpoints where they don’t even need to present a valid ID to board the same aircraft as American citizens. And we are supposed to trust this government to protect us?

Yet as we saw in the above two cases and many more, we cannot simply rely on the police and definitely not on the federal government to protect us from what is sure to come. That is why we need to maintain our diligence. To quote Spencer:

Only Americans who are likewise alert and aware can take lawful steps to stop jihadis in their tracks, and they may be the only line of defense between those jihadis and large crowds of unaware, defenseless human beings.

We as Americans need to keep our eyes open and to quote something that came out post-9/11, “if you see something, say something.” Spencer notes that the advantage in any possible terrorist incident is the jihadis know when, where, and how they will strike…we do not. However, that is why it is important for us as Americans to keep our head on a swivel and keep our eyes open for anything unusual. As a former police supervisor once said in roll call every night, “Use C&C [care and caution] out there. Moreover, don’t be afraid to let someone know if you see something that raises the hair up on the back of your neck. You might be surprised at how accurate gut instincts are.

We also need to understand that, at times, doing the right thing and defending your fellow man is sometimes required to maintain a free country. Over our 248-year history, we have seen time and again the sacrifices made by Americans, be it to get our freedom from England, fight our fellow countrymen to free slaves, battle the suicidal aggression of countries like Germany and Japan, or strike back after our country was attacked on 9/11.

We are in the middle of an election year and make no mistake about it, there are entities both outside and within our country that seek to disrupt the process. As Americans, we need to maintain our awareness and be prepared for what may come. In 2020, nobody saw the pandemic coming and it is now clear that had that not happened, Biden would be in a retirement home somewhere. If we fool ourselves into thinking something like that could not happen again, think again.

It is important to plan for the unthinkable. To be clear, this isn’t any type of “prepper” talk, but as we saw in 2020, should something go wrong, simple staples such as even toilet paper might be hard to come by. Nobody knows what the next terrorist attack might look like, but if it was along the lines of a cyberattack targeting communications, for example, things could get very bad very quickly. We’ve all come to rely heavily on our cell phones, but what would happen if your cell phone didn’t work for a day…two days…a week?

What if the attack came against our very vulnerable electric grid? According to POWER Magazine, if an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) event hits our power grid, up to 90% of the US population could die within short order. By way of information, when a major power crisis struck the state of Texas in 2021, 246 people were killed, with some estimates going as high as 702.  That outage lasted about three days.

The accident in Baltimore is being attributed to a “power outage” in the cargo ship. Some, however, believe it was the result of a cyberattack that took the ship’s power out. Indeed, some have questioned the various factors that had to all come together at the same time in order for this accident to happen.

Others meanwhile said if it indeed was a cyberattack, why would it have occurred at a time when it would theoretically do the least immediate damage? However, in the mind of jihadis, the long-term effects would be more beneficial. It is already estimated that the incident will have a multi-billion dollar economic impact. Not to mention the psychological toll if it is revealed it was indeed terrorism-related. The good news is no jihadi group has claimed responsibility.

Nonetheless, Americans need to remain vigilant. Many “experts” have said it’s not a matter of “if” a terrorist attack occurs against our country but “when.” Biden’s open border policies have pretty much guaranteed we will be hit. That is why it is important that we, as Americans, keep our eyes open and be prepared to intercede if the unthinkable looks like it is about to happen.