DHS Report Is As Much A Show Of Incompetency As Profiling Conservatives

I actually had a copy of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Rightwing Extremism” report from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at least one day before any major media source was reporting on it. Aside from the fact that what I read was poorly written, inciting, inaccurate, politically damaging, biased and conjured up ugly visions of Nazism, I hesitated to jump all over this story until I could find out whether the same poorly written reports had been done in the past about leftwing extremism (and I’ll copy the same use of one word, leftwing, as DHS did with rightwing.)

According to Michelle Malkin, there have been reports from DHS on leftwing extremism.

I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.

I tend to agree with Malkin but it certainly depends on who you talk to as to whether this report, being called a direct attack on conservatives and military veterans, is all that unusual.

Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report doesn’t think this report is anything that should upset conservatives. He actually asks why conservatives would put themselves in the same company of those being pointed out in the report.

Here’s my question: Why are prominent conservatives so quick to lump themselves in with genuine nuts and terrorists? Seriously.

Schlesinger also points out from a footnote in the report what he wants to use as a definition of who the report is targeting.

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

It is disingenuous to try to convince anybody that this is a definitive representation of what rightwing extremism is and is talked about in this report. It is all subjective and left up to the judgment of who? Janet Napolitano? Barack Obama? Or maybe the CNN reporter who yesterday, covering the Tea Party event in Chicago, called the event anti government, anti CNN and not fit for family viewing.

It needs also to be pointed out that nothing in this report addresses radical Islamic terrorists or any other terror organizations outside the U.S.

And this report follows in the footsteps of the Missouri Information and Analysis Center’s Strategic Report, “Modern Militia Movement“. Almost immediately after that report was made public a member of the Campaign for Liberty group was detained at length at a Missouri airport because he was carrying cash and brochures about his organization.

Yesterday on a local talk radio station here in the Tampa Bay area, I heard one host say that the DHS report on rightwing extremism wasn’t targeted at Tea Parties or conservatives because these reports were sanctioned under the Bush administration. Well, of course they were. It was under the Bush administration that the Department of Homeland Security was founded. The problem with that argument is that George Bush and his Secretary of Homeland Security didn’t write this report dated April 7, 2009. It was Janet Napolitano under the direction of her boss, Barack Obama. These two either knew exactly what they were doing or they need some remedial work on writing reports on national security.

We can argue forever on whether or not this report was directed at conservatives and any or all conservative movements. What we can agree on is that the document is a piece of poorly crafted bunk. It is non specific, it is written such that it will incite anger and does not define what they deem to be “extremism”. To read the report any honest person will come away believing that those who don’t espouse to the principles of abortion, bailouts, socialism, gun control, essentially all of Obama’s programs, you are a rightwing extremist. Not only that, about the only specific group pointed out is from our own military personnel. Shouldn’t we expect our military personnel to be angry and hurt?

This report went out to law enforcement agencies as an alert. It is so poorly crafted that it appears as an obvious target of anyone not in agreement with the president and his policies.

I don’t consider myself an extremist but after reading this report and being witness to the events taking place in this country today, I am left thinking I am on the DHS watch list.

Tom Remington