Remember when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her team refused to name the Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram as a terrorist organization in 2011?
As my amigo Jim Hoft over at the Gateway Pundit wrote, “the far left is suddenly outraged” about he group, but only after the terror group kidnapped close to 300 school girls in northeaster Nigeria.The left-leaning blog, ThinkProgress, was quick to run cover for why Clinton did not designate Boko Haram as a terror group.
But there were multiple valid reasons for the State Department to disagree with the Justice Department and other agencies dealing with counterterrorism — such as the FBI and CIA — who urged State to place Boko Haram on the Foreign Terrorists Organization (FTO) list. “Designation is an important tool, it’s not the only tool,” a former State Department official told the Beast. “There are a lot of other things you can do in counterterrorism that doesn’t require a designation.” This includes boosting development aid to undercut the causes of unrest and deploying the FBI to assist in tracking down Boko Haram, both of which the U.S. actually did.-ThinkProgress
Do you think the 2nd Amendment will be destroyed by the Biden Administration?(2)
To be fair, ThinkProgress does point out that in JUne 2012m Clinton did designate Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau and others as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” and the terror group finally received that long over due terroist billing in 2013.
For a good laugh, here is the petition that Moveon.org pushed in 2011,in hopes that it would keep the Clinton & Friends from fingering Boko Haram as a terror group.We urge you not to support the formal designation of Boko Haram in Nigeria as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO). Such a move would be a counterproductive mistake with far-reaching negative consequences for both Americans and Nigerians.
It is correct for the United States to join the vast majority of Nigerians in condemning the group for the brutal violence it has inflicted on innocent civilians in Nigeria and their threats to national unity and security in that country.
But U.S. government designation of the group as a FTO, as currently proposed by several Members of Congress and some officials in the the Department of Justice, would increase rather than diminish the threat from Boko Haram. It would give the group additional visibility and credibility among international terrorist networks. It would increase the chances that the group would direct its attacks against U.S. targets.
This petition was, and still is laughable.
