Lawmakers and media outlets are reviving the ‘War on Terror’ just in time for Trump

There are still a lot of questions to be answered about Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old Army veteran who killed 14 people while speeding down Bourbon Street, before being fatally shot by police.

We do know that Jabbar was experiencing a number of personal problems, including issues connected to multiple divorces and mounting financial difficulty. Beyond that, things become a bit murkier. He recorded an audio message saying he joined ISIS and his car was adorned with an ISIS flag. The FBI said he was “100% inspired” by the group, but his alleged allegiance doesn’t exactly include a coherent ideology.

He was surrounded by Muslims in his Houston-area neighborhood but apparently didn’t attend the local mosque or interact with them. He claimed that a 50 Cent album from 2003 was the “voice of Satan spreading among Prophet Muhammad’s followers” and “a sign of the end times.” A relative of Jabbar told the New York Times that he led a very secular life despite converting to Islam at a young age. “I don’t think I ever heard the word Allah said,” she told the paper.

It’s also unclear whether Jabbar possessed any political understanding of the Middle East. His half-brother told a reporter that he was upset about the recent violence, but curiously claimed that “it was genocide on both sides.”

Despite this information, many lawmakers have proclaimed that the New Orleans attack highlights the continued threat of radical Islam and are pushing for the government to embrace draconian policies in response.

“You’ve had the approach from our national security apparatus and institutions like the FBI, they almost think, oh, well, this Islamic terrorism, that that’s so 2001, right?,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox. “It’s like somehow it’s not a threat anymore. They’ve spent more resources going after nonviolent protesters on January 6th. They focus a lot of attention on things like DEI, and they downplay the threat that militant Islamic terrorism poses.”

“Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again,” tweeted Florida’s infamous, Islamophobic state senator Randy Fine. “The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”

Jabbar was a U.S.-born citizen but that didn’t stop incoming president Donald Trump from blaming the attack on “Radical Islamic Terrorism” facilitated by the “Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy.'”

Mainstream media outlets have embraced similar narratives.

“Jabbar’s recent address in the Houston area shared the same street with nearly a dozen properties owned by people with names common in Islamic cultures,” warns the Wall Street Journal.

The Jewish News Syndicate implements a similar stretch, drawing attention to the fact that a Houston imam (from a mosque Jabbar didn’t attend) gave a sermon with antisemitic remarks over a year ago.

The Islamic State collapsed in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, but a Reuters headline states that the New Orleans attack signals an ISIS “comeback bid.”

As we saw again and again during the “War on Terror,” some pundits are fabricating a link between the attack and domestic protests opposing U.S. foreign policy.

Fox News’ website informed readers that New Orleans residents held a rally for Palestine days after the attack. The Jerusalem Post claimed that there was an “ideological connection” between the attack and anti-genocide protesters in the United States. The Providence Journal’s Mark Patinkin says that Jabbar’s actions prove that “intifada” is not an innocent term.

“It’s one of the most fashionable cries of the movement,” writes Patinkin. “One can only hope that those parroting it don’t understand it. Because what it means in practice is what happened on New Year’s Eve on Bourbon Street.”

“The reminder that Islamic extremism remains a threat to the United States shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who lived through the 9/11 attacks and has paid any attention to the murderous ideology of the jihadists who threaten both Israel and America,”declared the Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff newsletter. “At the rallies and encampments around the country since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, it’s evident that some of the same protesters denouncing Israel embrace parts of a radical ideology that threatens U.S. homeland security.”

“Either way, the terrorist attack serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the risk of indulging or excusing dangerous ideologies, instead of calling them out and working to defeat them — both at home and in the Middle East,” the author concludes.

‘NYT’ response? Bring back its disgraced ‘jihad’ beat reporter.

The attack also seemingly prompted the New York Times to put award-winning reporter Rukmini Callimachi back on the paper’s ISIS beat.

Four years ago the Times retracted the majority of its 2018 Caliphate podcast, which Callimachi had hosted, after it was revealed that its central figure had repeatedly lied about his connection to ISIS.

Two years after Caliphate aired, Shehroze Chaudhry was arrested by Canadian authorities for perpetuating a hoax that endangered the public. In court Chaudhry admitted that he made up stories about serving as an ISIS fighter and an executioner in Syria.

“Times journalists were too credulous about the verification steps that were undertaken and dismissive of the lack of corroboration of essential aspects of Mr. Chaudhry’s account,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for The Times. “Since that time, we’ve introduced new practices to prevent similar lapses,” she said.

The podcast scandal isn’t the only aspect of Callimachi’s reporting that has faced scrutiny.

“Along with careful study of jihadist social media, original documents became one of the guiding lights of Callimachi’s journalism,” explains a comprehensive 2020 piece from Jacob Silverman at The New Republic. “But they also led her to do work that critics describe as credulous, sensationalist, and even reckless. While she occupies a high-profile position sure to garner criticism, Callimachi’s work has been the target of routine objections by scholars, subject matter experts, and Iraqis and Syrians, some of them frustrated that she depends so heavily on original sources without speaking any Arabic.”

What the coverage isn’t discussing

On the same day as Jabbar’s killing spree, active-duty US Army solider Matthew Livelsberger killed himself before blowing up a Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump International Las Vegas hotel. Seven people were injured in the blast.

In an important piece at The Intercept, journalist Nick Turse points out that U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extreme violence.

“From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland,” writes Turse.

“From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals, according to data from the new START report,” he continues. “From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries — a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.”

These statistics certainly deserve further attention, but it’s safe to say that commentary about the supposed return of “radical Islam” will take up a lot more space.