The American Connection to Terrorism Revisited

By Dan Cadman on June 2, 2014

Another shoe has dropped in the story of the American suicide bomber I blogged about the other day — the young man going by the nom de guerre Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki, who blew himself up at the behest of the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front of Syria in order to strike a restaurant allegedly often populated by Syrian soldiers.

At the time I wrote the blog, although al Nusra had proclaimed his American citizenship, U.S. law enforcement officials were limiting their acknowledgement only to "an American connection", a phrase I found curious.

News reports are now confirming that the young man, whose real name was Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha (Abusalha), was in fact a citizen. But beyond that, finding out the exact circumstances surrounding his citizenship is like peeling back onionskin: laborious and time-consuming. This appears to be in part because it is considered politically incorrect and insensitive to want to know such questions. Doubt that? Take a quick look at many of the accounts in mainstream media, and see how many sidestep the issue, preferring instead to refer to him as a "Florida man" or something similar. See, for instance, here, here, and here.

However, according to one account, he was the son of Palestinian immigrants. It's a toss-up, then, whether he was in fact born in the United States, or derived his citizenship as a child when his parents naturalized. I lean slightly toward the view that he obtained it derivatively — it would explain the initial equivocation used by law enforcement while they looked into the specifics of Abusalha's status.

I want to make clear that, while I take a dim view toward the premise of birthright citizenship as presently applied toward all children — including children of illegal aliens and of nonimmigrants who come here to visit for a short period and have no inherent ties to our country — I don't disapprove of derivative naturalization.

In some ways, whether Moner Abusalha became a citizen at birth or derivatively is irrelevant and in other ways it is fundamental. But either way, it forces us to confront difficult questions we would rather avoid; questions having to do with assimilation of immigrants and the children of immigrants, particularly those whose cultural outlook is not inherently Western, and may even be tilted against the Western liberal tradition.

Remember the national discussion of race we were supposed to have when Barack Obama took office — the one that has never actually taken place? Well, the same holds true with immigration and assimilation. This national conversation is also critically necessary but, like the other one, we never quite get around to having it. And, difficult as it would be in the best of times, such a conversation is even more difficult when one side engages in ad hominem arguments, personal attacks, or the use of emotionally-laden pejoratives to describe the other side's views.

How can we possibly entertain a rational dialogue about the nature and direction of "immigration reform" legislation when we have no consensus on questions of assimilation, and cannot undertake a dialogue without fear of being demonized?

If we are to continue to accept immigrants in large numbers from all parts of the world, do we not owe it to ourselves to ensure that they can — and want to — assimilate? And do we not then also owe them the tools and opportunities to assimilate in the smoothest, least traumatic way possible? (Note that I am not talking about entitlements; I am talking about cultural and social assimilation.)

But we do neither. We seem to want to believe that mere quantity is an adequate substitute for intelligent screening on the front end and, once having let them in, that we have fulfilled our obligation to the immigrants to help them really and truly become Americans.

At the risk of teetering on the edge of poor taste in my metaphors, I would say that this failure is a ticking time bomb that will come back to haunt us as a society.

Apparently the FBI director thinks so, too. According to some of the news articles cited earlier, referring to the Syrian conflict, he has asserted "[T]here's going to be a diaspora out of Syria at some point, and we are determined not to let lines be drawn from Syria today to a future 9/11."

Surely, we owe our children — all of them — and our children's children, better than that.