Jihadist magazine highlights risk of failure of meaningful intelligence oversight by Congress (Rep. Pete Hoekstra)

One of the last acts of this Democratic Congress on national security proved once again that they just don’t get the urgency to protect our nation against determined enemies.

This is unfortunate, as this week we received another indication of the terrorists’ determination to attack with the release of the latest edition of Inspire, a radical jihadist propaganda magazine that called on its readers to attempt to murder U.S. government employees in restaurants in Washington, D.C. Although the new edition of the magazine was mostly a rehash of familiar terrorist themes, it was an indication that radical jihadists are continuing their efforts to instigate terrorist attacks on the United States.

It is ironic that Inspire surfaced just days after President Obama signed a bizarre intelligence authorization for the last fiscal year. The bill, which passed the House around midnight on September 29th, wasn't even valid for a single day – the legislation covered fiscal year 2010 which ended on September 30th – and was almost meaningless since it was stripped of its “classified annex,” which typically discusses secret intelligence programs and how they are to be funded. 

Where is the bill that Congress should have been approving for the new 2011 fiscal year?  It hasn't even been drafted. And why was the 2010 bill delayed so long? Because of a fight between House Democrats and the White House over language drafted to provide cover for Speaker Pelosi’s scurrilous May 2009 remark that the CIA misleads Congress all the time. Instead of wasting time on the 2010 “protect Pelosi” intelligence bill, Congress should have been working on legislation to empower our intelligence agencies so they can protect our nation from new and emerging security threats.

The new intelligence bill did nothing to address recent, evolving threats such as the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2009 Christmas Day bombing, the attempted terrorist bombing in Times Square last May, or the terrorist strategies advocated in Inspire. The bill doesn’t address the emergence of individuals, like radical Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, and their ties to these incidents. There is nothing in the bill to address new outreach efforts by al-Qaeda groups using the Internet and other electronic media to recruit members and encourage acts of terrorism against the West. Why did the new intelligence bill not address these issues? Because it was voted out of committee in June 2009 and was 15 months out of date.

Although the latest edition of Inspire is actually not very inspiring, its call for lunch-counter attacks in Washington, D.C. is alarming. It also is consistent with the type of smaller-scale terrorist attacks that al-Qaeda and its affiliates are seemingly focused on these days. Overall, the themes and messages of this edition are a repeat of the ones we saw in the first edition, repackaged in the same slick, glossy style as before. Its target audience remains the same, easily swayed radicals that may be inclined to launch one-off, lone-wolf attacks. Whatever the flaws of this publication, it is an indication that radical jihadists are perfecting a new tool to advance their agenda.

In addition to the direct threat to eateries in the nation’s capital, the interviews of former Guantanamo Bay detainees about their return to jihad should serve as a warning for the Obama administration about the risks of its continued push to close the terrorist detention facility. The Democrats’ recently enacted intelligence bill was stripped of Republican-backed prohibitions against bringing terrorist detainees into the United States and giving foreign terrorists the rights of U.S. citizens.

Playing terrorist catch-and-release with jihadists is a bad policy for the safety of our homeland and our armed forces and citizens overseas. The steady drumbeat of reports about former Gitmo detainees re-engaging in jihad is loud enough now that it cannot be ignored. If Inspire should inspire anything, it should be the Obama administration and congressional Democrats to implement strong legislation and policies to protect our homeland by keeping Gitmo open, stopping the expansion of terrorist rights, putting an end to detainee transfers to countries where they can launch attacks against our people, and updating our national security systems to defeat new and evolving strategies from those who would do us harm.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) is the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.