Regarding the arrest of a suspect in the Times Square not-bombing, I’m of the same opinion as Steve M — if that’s the best the Jihadi Islamic Menace (JIM) can do, they aren’t that much of a menace. High five, everybody.
Naturally, the fact that JIM in America is too incompetent to build even a simple fertilizer bomb has not stopped the rightie blogosphere from going into mighty orgasms of JIM hysteria. If you aren’t whipped into a state of high terror, buckaroos, you must not love America. Or something.
Further, righties want to honor the alleged perpetrator by sending him to Gitmo to face a secret military-tribunal type trial, instead of a mundane, pedestrian, inglorious civilian criminal trial. I’m with c u n d gulag — “Now, we try him in a court of law. And, if guilty, sentence him to the appropriate prison. Not Gitmo. No martyr. No hero. Just a criminal.”
They’re also screaming that this arrest somehow signals some kind of incompetence on the part of the Obama Administration. Actually, seems to me things have gone pretty smoothly. Bombing attempt on Saturday, no one hurt, New York shrugs it off, arrest made Monday. System functioning.
For lo these many years, when any of us on the Left pointed out that the Bush Administration had all kinds of screaming neon warnings about an imminent terrorist attack in 2001 and took no steps whatsoever to prevent it, we were told we were crazy. But because the FBI didn’t bother to personally keep surveillance on one of millions of Middle Easterners in the U.S., somehow this is incompetence. Right.
(Somebody should ask these geniuses how high they want their taxes cranked up to pay for all this individual surveillance.)
I also appreciated what Roy Edroso wrote at Village Voice (and not just because he linked to me):
You may remember that right after 9/11 it became trendy for conservatives to gush over New York and Rudy “America’s Mayor” Giuliani. Then, when it became apparent that New Yorkers still weren’t going to vote Republican, they went back to their usual uncomprehending contempt toward the big, bad City (“I get the feeling these New Yorker liberals just don’t understand how 9-11 changed things. It’s like they don’t even remember it”).
But this weekend a car bomb was found, undetonated, in Times Square, and rightbloggers rushed to explain that the non-explosion was, like the crotch-bomber’s non-explosion, all Obama’s fault, and to generally try to make terror work for them, as it did back in those marvelous days of September 2001, by wrapping the city they despise in their oily, insincere hugs.
What really infuriates them about New York is that New Yorkers don’t stay terrorized. It’s a patriot’s duty to be terrorized, you know.
See also James Fallows, “If the TSA Were Running New York.”
Barbara and the rest of us out here – the bottom line with this terrorist issue is their is still not much we can really do to prevent terrorism. Police and intelligence work is good (better than starting wars…) but the bottom line is we should simply adjust to a realistic amount of risk in our day to day lives. I like the way Barbara just said “Actually, seems to me things have gone pretty smoothly. Bombing attempt on Saturday, no one hurt, New York shrugs it off, arrest made Monday. System functioning.” In other words New Yorkers aren’t going to quite going to work or walking out their front doors, we just have to realize shit sometimes happens and become adults! Lets be grateful McCain and Palin didn’t win, they would be harassing the CIA about finding WMDs in Iran already.
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maha,
I remember when, during the 2004 re-election year, the Bush “Regime” shut down Wall Street for some nebulous threat that never was. Not for a threat like this, but over literally NOTHING! Except to gin up the fear.
I think what bothers them is that NYers aren’t crapping their pants at every opportunity.
Back in the mid-70’s, I remember when Grand Central, The Port Authority Station, and Penn Station had lockers that you could rent for, if I remember right, a quarter per hour. It was great. When we moved out of the city, I could come down as a teenager and go shopping for books and records in mid-town, make my purchases and drop them off; and go to The Village, go back and drop them off; and go Up-town, and then come back and haul some HUGE amount of books and records back to the train to Upstate NY, sweating from the strain. Then, the lockers in London and Germany had bombs placed in them and there went that… After that, you got a knapsack and lugged everything around -which cut down the amount you bought, because, who wanted to lug around 50+ pounds of crap around town? A hernia you could get…
Everytime I went into the WTC, the Empire State Building, Yankee or Shea, The Garden, any Museum,or anywhere else around town, you knew any, and every, day may be THE day when IT happened. You just dealt with it. That’s why I cracked up when the anti-terrorism budget in the latter part of the Bush years allocated more per capita to a petting zoo in Indiana, than to tourist and sports attraction in NYC.
The righties hate us because we’re not afraid. They want up joining them in pissing their Depend’s and crying “Whoa is us!”
No, “whoa” be unto us if we fall for that. AGAIN! We’ve given up more rights in the last 9 years than in the period from 1981 to 2001, when that was it’s own holocaust on civil rights. And I don’t see it getting any better. Especially not under an African-American Democrat who CAN’T look weak on terror, real or imagined.
And, Maha, thanks for mentioning my comment. You’re my homepage, and the site I respect the most. I fell honored! I’m all verklempt….
🙂
Watch also for desperate attempts to establish that this devilish plot was hatched and ‘organised’ by those al Qaeda bastards in the Middle East. The same thing happened when those two clowns crashed their SUV into the Glasgow Airport terminal … they had ‘links’ to ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’. Because these plots are so sophisticated, you know they can only be the result of months of careful staff work in those terrorist strongholds in Islamofasciststan … which proves that we need to double and redouble the number of predator drones we have over there blowing away ‘al Qaeda Leaders’ (487 so far on my count … al Qaeda has more generals than the Pentagon).
I’m wondering how people, particularly New Yorkers, felt about Mayor Bloombergs appeal to congress to stop approving firearm applications for those on the terrorist watch list. In the wake of the bombing I even made an emotional leap, considering the practice really stupid but once my brain went into gear it began to seem like a very slippery slope. After all some terrorists are homegrown white guys liike Eric Rudolph.\ who claim the mantle of patriotism albeit in the same way a 4 year old (and a really vile, evil one at that) might conceive it.
Hindsight is 20-20 and who it going to decide who goes on “the list”. Will they need to start randomly denying apps so those on the list don’t get suspicious? You know, like cavity searching granny the same way they do middle eastern men in their 20’s with one-way tickets to Karachi. What is one of the tea partiers assembling in VA across the VA-DC line was on “the list” and had been denied but was there brandishing a firearm. If they think that Obama is some socialist-authoritarian-dictator now….
So much of what the right wants now is built upon the assumption that “everyone can tell just by looking that I am not a terrorist.” No wonder they are all so concerned that the terrorist fits the ethnic stereotype.
Governing is easy for these types. If someone looks like them they’re OK. And they’re quite happy with laws being made on that basis. It’s all very simple…until they start busting up the white supremacist groups hatching some scheme with all the military precision and organization of the three stooges.
Actually, combined with the economic recession we’re now experiencing, this constant and consistent drum beat of fear of the ‘other’ sets the stage for demigogues to take power.
A cursory read of history during the ’30’s makes clear that the Depression caused political upheaval almost world-wide which opened the door to nationalistic demigogues who didn’t usurp power but were granted it by desperate citizens.
Felicity, that seems dead on accurate from what we are seeing now. The emotional leap in this case would be to vest in someone the authrity to deny firearm apps at their own discretion. There are no assurances that power, once bestowed, will be used as we see fit.
Funny how this happens at a time when people claim they want government to have less power. It’s the same sort of clear thinking that we get from people who shun the census yet want a national identity card so that illegals can be more readily identified. They don’t see the contradiction.
I think the story of the 2000s was basically, “I hear America clucking”.
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