Battle for our minds : Western elites and the terror threat / Michael Widlanski.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Terror and academia: sabotaging the Western mind -- Terror and the press: the devil's bargain -- CNN: certainly not news -- Journalists as lap dogs -- Protecting the CIA and boosting Bin-Laden -- Counter-terror intelligence as oxymoronic or just moronic -- The ideologies, methods, and motives of Arab-Islamic terror -- Country case studies: operative lessons -- Scenarios and solutions.

Arab-Islamic terrorists had been attacking the West for years but the reports were dismissed as the work of 2madmen3 and, in fact, all the while recruiters and fund-raisers for Arab-Islamic terror were receiving academic and economic sanctuary in some of America{u2019}s most esteemed institutions. Had Osama bin Laden been held accountable in 1992, 1996, and 1998, and had his followers been called out, his Al-Qaeda network wouldn{u2019}t have become a clarion call for anti-Western terror. Now as new attacks, aborted and otherwise, are carried out from London to Mumbai to New York{u2019}s Times Square, Western elites{u2014}academia, the media, and government officials{u2014}have once again been fueling that same dangerous complacency that is leaving us as vulnerable as before. In Battle for Our Minds, Michael Widlanski delivers a powerful and sound argument for turning around this willful ignorance, and explains exactly how it can be done: by facing and genuinely understanding the precise motives and mind games behind those who want to destroy us. He names the officials, media pundits, and academics who have hindered the battle against Islamic terror, in turn obstructing a logical fight to stop it. Clearly, a lack of factual accuracy is sabotaging the Western mind, and Widlanski{u2019}s anger is justified: Why has an all-out 2holy war3 been softened into the more liberally acceptable 2spiritual struggle3? Why, pre-9/11, were the terrorist threats made in New York City mosques ignored? Why did we go out of our way to give bin Laden a proper burial out of respect to an ideology that erased the World Trade Center? Why is President Barack Obama so hesitant to offend the enemy by calling it what it is: Islamic Extremist Terror? How can we stop it if, out of a weak and outrageous political correctness, we refuse to even recognize it? Dr. Widlanski lays out a commonsense, no-holds-barred solution to an imperative and increasingly dangerous global dilemma. This is not a witch hunt, nor a temporary Band-Aid, but a comprehensive strategy built around a hard-hitting truth carefully omitted from every liberal media outlet, and downplayed, overlooked, and incorrectly assessed by the FBI, CIA, and the State Department: terrorist 2martyrs3 want to change the course of history. By convincing them that their acts are futile, the tide turns and we can prevent further acts{u2014}and win the battle for our minds.