First, spend two minutes and thirty seven seconds watching this.

Ms. Lahren,

I appreciate your passion for the United States. It is clear you believe yourself to be a patriot. I too consider myself a patriot. I served 8 years in our nation’s armed forces and now work at the Department of Homeland Security. While we share the same sense of patriotism, I do not see demonstrated from this rant the slightest idea on how to actually keep our nation safe and our citizens secure.

I find this rant about the shooting of U.S. servicemen to be completely misguided and utterly devoid of any meaningful strategy.

The rant does nothing to address the serious issues we are facing and simply panders to the fears and anger of the American public. The rant demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the geopolitical situation that has led the U.S. to be targeted by radical Islamists. The “solution” to “put the fear of God in them” with a “B-1 bomber overhead” is singularly the most ill-conceived notion I have heard in quite some time. There was a time for this type strategy. In the aftermath of 9–11, attacking strongholds of Al-Qaeda in the manner you describe was indeed the correct measure to be taken; however, the invasion of Iraq and other subsequent military actions have not made us safer as a nation.

The fact remains that at this point, the more the U.S. flexes its military might overseas, the more we will be targeted by radicals. Despite what is promoted from some, the U.S. military under Obama have not significantly decreased actions overseas intended to target terrorists. We fly hundreds of missions a day all over the world. Some of these are surveillance flights, some are training missions, some are supply, rescue, and foreign aid missions; and some are to drop precision guided weapons from unmanned aerial vehicles.

Some of these munitions inevitably have collateral damage. These innocent civilians are killed by the same type of attacks you seem to be promoting, and each innocent person that dies has family members that survive the attack. Watching your loved ones die from an enemy you cannot see breeds hate in people. That’s why they hate us. Not because of our freedoms; not because our religion is different than theirs; not because we do not worship as they do; but because of our use of deadly force and some of our uneven ham-fisted foreign policies.

Many people in the Middle East don’t understand how the U.S. picks and chooses which brutal dictatorships to support and which to destroy. Many don’t understand how we can support Saudi Arabia and the crimes against humanity that they have committed and continue to commit and still claim to be pro-democracy and champion human rights. Many don’t understand how we can decry terrorism now, but support a nation established in part by some who utilized terrorist tactics, such as when the Zionist movement bombed the King David Hotel (Jerusalem,1946). In fact, terrorist groups around the world study the tactics used to wrest Palestine from those who had lived there for generations and establish the state of Israel. As has been said, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

The U.S., for various political reasons, backed the establishment of Israel and deemed them to be “freedom fighters”; however, this created enormous animosity against the U.S. throughout the Middle East. It was seen by many as the U.S., an outside nation, backing a terrorist group to establish a presence in oil rich lands. These are just a few of the reasons hatred against the U.S. is prevalent throughout the Middle East. Whether or not you favor or are against the decision to support Israel is irrelevant to this discussion. What is relevant is that we must understand that this support of Israel is at the heart of why we are targets of radical Islamists. Therefore, your solution to put a B-1 bomber overhead will only exacerbate the problem and lead to more dead Marines, more dead civilians, and more unrest around the world.

I am tired of Americans dying.

The ideology projected in this rant will only lead to more innocents suffering. This is not a “strategy” we should be willing to embrace.

Further, Ms. Lahren, the freedom of religion is a fundamental and core value of our country. I’m not sure why it was deemed necessary to continually point out radical Islam as the ideology underlying the attacks. It is as if you are under the impression that leadership in Washington simply doesn’t understand this point. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is readily recognized by our nation’s leadership that radical Islam and the radicalization of impressionable youth is a serious problem. They may not come out and rant about it because they recognize this will only make the problem worse. They also recognize that the vast majority of Muslims are not radical and do not engage in violence. They further recognize the First Amendment right to freedom of religion prohibits them from targeting people based on religion.

Another salient fact to this discussion is that the shooter was an American citizen and therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens until the time he engaged in violence. Are you suggesting we deny citizenship to Muslims? How does this line of thinking coexist with the First Amendment?

Based on the rant you delivered one could conclude that we as a nation should target the Muslim community for persecution and go on indiscriminate bombing campaigns across the Muslim world. This line of thinking is misguided at best and genocidal at worst.

In conclusion, Ms. Lahren, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I love our country. Therefore, I cannot sit idly by and watch as policies are promoted that undermine our Constitution and further jeopardize the security of our nation.

— A Concerned Homeland Security Practitioner

Henry Bemis is an official in the Department of Homeland Security who writes here under an assumed name. These comments are not intended to represent the official position of anyone or anything other than the author.

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