Time to Crack Down on Jihad 2.0

Web indoctrination of terrorists on US soil poses major threat

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 19, 2009 8:46 AM CST

(Newser) – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has knocked Nidal Hasan out of the headlines but the Fort Hood suspect is the kind of threat America needs to focus on, warns Daniel Henninger. Home-grown terrorists, indoctrinated over the Internet, are now more of a danger than "old-school" jihadis abroad, and the ideology that radicalizes them is currently protected speech, Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal.

First Amendment law, Henninger writes, has never had to deal with "a widely distributed ideology that has as its raison d'être the mass murder of Americans and destruction of American property." The question of whether investigators should continue to face tight restrictions in their efforts to track "self-radicalizing" terrorists is one that should feature large in next year's elections, Henninger concludes.

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This Oct. 2008 file photo shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. The imam communicated with Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan online. (AP Photo/Muhammad ud-Deen, File)

Thirteen flags and flowers are shown at the apartment complex where Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan lived outside of Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

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For now this is the way it is: Future Hasans can get jacked up all day on kill-the-Americans Web sites, and we have to wait until they put in motion a conspiracy like Fort Dix or the Colorado jihadists. Or until they start shooting. - Daniel Henninger

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Time to Crack Down on Jihad 2.0