Category Archives: Terrorism

Righties on the Side of Terrorism

Posted on by

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.”

Why I Don’t Like to Speculate

Posted on by

The New York Post published a video that allegedly shows a suspect in the Times Square bomb attempt —

In a chilling surveillance video, the man is seen at the end of Shubert Alley peeling off a sweatshirt he’d been wearing over a short-sleeved red shirt, furtively glancing over his shoulder, then stuffing the sweatshirt into a bag.

Yes, some guy removing a sweatshirt on a warm spring day is certainly suspicious. So I looked at the NY Post video, which was made with a phone camera, and I have no idea why this particular guy was more of a “suspect” than anyone else seen in the video.

At times like this I think of Jean Charles de Menezes. If the name doesn’t ring a bell —

Think back to the 2005 London subway bombing. In the aftermath of the bombing, London police spotted a Middle Eastern-looking man acting very suspiciously —

[The man] was wearing a thick coat when he ran into the Stockwell subway station in south London Friday. Temperatures in London on Friday were in the 70s. Police began following the man when he left his home in an effort to arrest him as part of their investigation.

The man “was challenged and refused to obey police instructions,” Blair said. Witnesses said about 10 armed police in street clothes chased the suspect, he tripped, and, after telling bystanders to get down, police then shot him; the man died.

“They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He’s dead,” witness Mark Whitby told the British Broadcasting Corp. “He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified.”

Whitby said the man didn’t appear to have been carrying anything but said he was wearing a thick coat that looked padded.

Another witnesses, Anthony Larkin, told the BBC that the man appeared to have “a bomb belt and wires coming out.” Sky News reported that there were no explosives found on the man after he was shot.

If you read the early news stories about the guy, he certainly sounded suspicious, if not downright guilty. However, after a few days it finally came out that the man who was killed was 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national. Menezes had been working as an electrician in London since 2002.

His visa status was questionable; some news stories suggest his visa might have expired, but that was never completely clear. Other than the possible visa violation, however, the guy had no criminal record and no ties to any terrorist group that anyone ever turned up.

Basically, Menezes was killed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time while looking sort of Middle Eastern.

I appreciate the NYPD might have some reason to suspect the balding white guy in the video that they’re not telling us. But to call the bit of video at the NY Post “chilling” is just silly. It’s a video of an average guy taking off his shirt. And I think whipping up hysteria over this guy (going on at some rightie sites; the usual ones) is irresponsible.

The “T” Word and Times Square

Posted on by

[Couple of updates below.]

On a warm Saturday night, Times Square has got to be one of the most densely packed places on the planet. Sometimes the crowds are so thick that walking just one block is nearly impossible.

So, while last night’s car bomb didn’t hurt anyone, panicking people with the “t” word — terrorism — might have been very dangerous.

New Yorkers don’t panic easily, but the Times Square crowd last night no doubt contained a high percentage of tourists. This is partly because the natives have enough sense to not go near Times Square on a Saturday night unless they have a very specific reason to be there. If you’re just out for dinner and a stroll, several other parts of the city are less crowded and have a better choice of restaurants.

The other kind of panic the city doesn’t want is the kind of panic that causes people to vacation somewhere else. NYC needs those tourism dollars. Who else is going to see all those Walt Disney musicals that have been on Broadway forever and pay $25 for a pastrami and corned beef sandwich at Lindy’s?

So, there are all kinds of practical reasons why the city of New York is reluctant to attach the word “terrorism” to the car bomb, even though by most definitions of the “t” word a car bomb automatically qualifies. There’s always a chance the perpetrator did not actually intend to terrorize anyone but was just following the orders of the voices in his head. Clearly, the perp was not part of al Qaeda’s “A” team.

Of course, these obvious and practical reasons for keeping the rhetoric toned down do not occur to rightie bloggers, who are quivering with outrage that the “t” word isn’t being plastered all over today’s headlines. They suspect some kind of cover-up. For example, the predictably thick Darleen of Protein Wisdom wrote, “With NYPD already attempting to squash any terrorism link, how much can we trust them to be honest with the findings of their investigation?”

In other words, in Darleen’s world an honest and forthright NYPD would immediately have declared the bomb a possible act of Muslim jihadists, thereby pretty much destroying the city’s summer tourism season, before they’d had time to investigate anything.

Pam Geller (do you really want me to link to her?) wrote, “Finally get out and about — Saturday night in NY — and I have to bolt home to report this story. Can we count on Muslim bombs failing? And catching every jihadi before he gets one of his balls bombs off? Is that our strategy now?” Let’s not jump to any premature conclusions or anything.

Several accounts have said the SUV that contained the incendiary device (which, experts said, would never have exploded [update: click on link in second paragraph, above, for corroboration]) was parked near the theater running the “Lion King.” Maybe the perp was a disgruntled former Disney employee.

Seriously, other than picking a very crowded area for maximum injury, I don’t see an obvious connection between Times Square and anybody’s righteous cause. The perp might be Muslim, but not necessarily. (And if he is, all the Muslim cab drivers who make a living picking up fares in the theater district might be less than approving.) But if it turns out the perp is a right-wing loon trying to purify Manhattan for Jesus, can we all count on Geller to never admit she was wrong? Of course!

I have no doubt that Mayor Bloomberg is busting chops (that’s a New York expression) right now, pushing the investigation as hard and as fast as possible, because no one wants to prevent another such incident more than he does. One car bomb is a fluke; two is a rash of canceled hotel reservations.

Update: The SUV was indeed parked right next to the Viacom building, which means one possible reason someone might have for attempting to set off a bomb in Times Square is in retaliation for South Park’s portrayal of Mohammad. However, if that’s the case someone should explain it to the Pakistani Taliban, which is claiming credit for the attempt without linking it to South Park. I suspect the Pakistani Taliban is just grandstanding, though.

Update: Newshoggers notes that there also is a Bank of America next to where the SUV was parked. This is true, but the main Bank of America building is on 42nd Street near Bryant Park; the one on 45th and Broadway is a branch. So I doubt there’s a Bank of America connection.

Doug Hughes points out (and I should have thought of this) that it’s terribly difficult to park exactly where you want to in Manhattan. If someone were determined to park a car right next to the Viacom building he might have had to drive in circles for hours until a spot opened up. It’s more likely the perpetrator just parked as close to Times Square as he could get.

Update: The average ten-year-old boy could have made a better bomb.

More Sizzle Than Pop

Posted on by

When I heard about explosives on a Delta flight to Detroit, my first reaction was the same as Thers:

It means Greater Wingnuttia is going to get the very special happy Christmas they most desire, because what they like best of all is to wet their pants in an ecstasy of hysterical screeching;

I noticed the initial blogosphere reactions to the incident were almost all from the Right. I assume they spent yesterday stuffing Christ back into Christmas, but they took time out to comment on the near-atrocity. However, the reaction from the screechers seems to me a tad toned down from what it would have been two or three years ago. So far, for example, Little Lulu has not devoted even one exclamation mark to the story. Maybe she’s run through her yearly quota.

The incident must have been genuinely terrifying for the passengers. On the other hand, if this is the best al Qaeda can do these days (assuming al Qaeda is involved at all, which I think at the moment is only being assumed) I’d say we’re winning the war on weapons of mass destruction-related program activities, although terror itself still has some of us on the ropes.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is telling people the man with the explosives has “significant terrorist connections.” This would be great news if it were true; it would tell us that significant terrorists are a pretty lame crew these days.

Great Day for America: Only 300 Brainwashed Dupes Rally to Appease Terrorists

Posted on by

Someone named Kejda Gjermani writes about being among 300 to 400 people on Foley Square, Manhattan, yesterday. They were protesting the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others alleged to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Manhattan, you can more people than that to line up for coffee and bagels. Even the dimmer New Yorkers who don’t grasp the significance of a civil trial are not worked up enough about it to protest, apparently.

Doubtless, the weather deterred many would-be attendees. But the 300-400 people who had shown up were determined and righteously angry–at the president’s and attorney general’s measly arguments for extending to the 9/11 mastermind the same legal privileges of American citizens; at the travesty of justice that his civil trial would entail; and at the cheap rhetorical shots through which the administration is dismissing the critics of its decision.

Cheap rhetorical shots like calling the lot of you cowards and appeasers of terrorism, Kejda Gjermani? Because as far as I’m concerned, that’s what you are. Instead of standing up to terrorists, you would rather fearfully betray our laws and values and demonstrate to terrorists we’re the despots they thought we were. Thanks loads.

The poor sap Gjermani actually quotes the engraving on the New York State Supreme Courthouse — “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government” — as an argument for military trials. Stupid, much?

The rally was sponsored by something called the 9/11 Never Forget coalition, which is supposed to be “a diverse group of 9/11 victims, family members, first responders, active and reserve members of the military, veterans, and concerned Americans.” The comment I left on their website is awaiting moderation and I don’t expect it to be posted, so here it is —

Speaking as someone who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 — after years of listening to President Bush claim that we were attacked because “they hate us for our freedoms,” it seems to me that trying KSM in a civilian court in New York City is the biggest flipped middle finger we could display to the terrorists. Trying KSM secretly in a military court is cowardly and caving in to terrorists, and all of the people on this panel should be ashamed of themselves.

But someone named Joe Citizen left a better comment —

I respect all of you, but think you terribly wrong on this issue. I am thrilled that the Justice Department has refused to play the game that KSM and his ilk wish, that they be considered some sort of legitimate military force fighting for their people. They are the lowest form of murderous criminals, and I am thankful that a jury of New Yorkers will get to pass judgment on their crimes.

I don’t know why exactly you people have chosen to take the opposite position on this. Some amongst you are driven, I am sure, by rank political opportunism, some others I fear, do not have much confidence in the American judicial system, or the American people. Maybe there are other more benign motivations, but they are erroneous and damaging.

Our American system, and our American values, are fully capable of dealing with horrendous crimes like this, and I wish you all would understand and support that.

That says it all pretty plainly, and it got past the site moderator. Glory be.

Report: Bush Let bin Laden Get Away

Posted on by

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report says the Bush Administration got soft and let bin Laden get away.

Tina Moore, New York Daily News:

Osama Bin Laden was within military reach when the Bush administration allowed him to disappear into the mountains of Afghanistan rather than pursue him with a massive military force, a new Senate report says.

The report asserts that the failure to get the terrorist leader when he was at his most vulnerable in December 2001 – three months after the 9/11 attacks – led to today’s reinvigorated insurgency in Afghanistan. …

… The report calls then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, the top military commander at the time, to the carpet and asserts the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault on Bin Laden with several thousand troops.

Instead, fewer than 100 commandoes, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalize on air strikes and track down the ragged band of terrorists.

I like this part:

At the time, Rumsfeld expressed concern over the backlash that could be created by a large U.S. troop presence,

It never occurred to him to apply the same concern to Iraq?

On or about Dec. 16, 2001, Bin Laden and bodyguards “walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area,” where he is still believed to be, the report says.

Scott Shane, New York Times:

The report, based in part on a little-noticed 2007 history of the Tora Bora episode by the military’s Special Operations Command, asserts that the consequences of not sending American troops in 2001 to block Mr. bin Laden’s escape into Pakistan are still being felt.

The report blames the lapse for “laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.”

Here’s the punch line: Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, actually has an op ed in the current issue titled “Why Dick Cheney Should Run in 2012.” I don’t think it’s a spoof. Meachem doesn’t exactly say Cheney should be president, but he somehow thinks Cheney’s ideas should still be taken seriously.

A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way.

Or, we could engage in lots of investigations followed by lots of public hearings.

As John McCain pointed out in the fall of 2008, he is not Bush. Nor is Cheney, but the former vice president would make the case for the harder-line elements of the Bush world view.

And we need to revisit the “Bush world view” why, exactly?

Far from fading away, Cheney has been the voice of the opposition since the inauguration. Wouldn’t it be more productive and even illuminating if he took his arguments out of the realm of punditry and into the arena of electoral politics? Are we more or less secure because of the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Does the former vice president still believe in a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Did the counterterror measures adopted in the aftermath of the attacks go too far? Let’s have the fight and see what the country thinks.

Or, let’s not. Instead, let’s round up the turkeys and send them to The Hague. The Bush world view would get thoroughly and objectively aired there, I suspect.

Domestic Terrorists Don’t Count

Posted on by

Dave Neiwert wants to know why national news media aren’t jumping all over the story of an Ohio man named Mark Campano who turned his apartment into a bomb factory.

Police found 30 completed pipe bombs in his apartment along with components to make more, plus 17 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Campano is in an Akron hospital with injuries received when one of the bombs exploded.

Neighbors called Campano an anti-government whackjob, so it’s not much of a leap to suspect Campano might have been planning domestic terrorism. But you know the drill — terrorists don’t make the news unless they’re named Mohammed.

The predictably stupid R.S. McCain writes about this incident, titling his blog post “Incompetent dopehead pipe-bomber as dangerous as al-Qaeda, lefty implies.” That wasn’t Dave’s point, but let’s run with it.

Who is more dangerous — Mark Campano, a whackjob with an apartment full of real pipe bombs and guns, or —

Each of those cases were taken very seriously, and the plotters pretty much were all convicted of something. But a guy with 30 pipebombs doesn’t need to be taken seriously, according to R.S. McCain. To R.S., a right-wing whackjob with thirty real pipebombs is less dangerous than jihadist whackjobs with lots of non-operational plots but no bombs.

Note to R.S.M., if he drops by here: I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, so don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand terrorism or appreciate how awful it is. I suspect I appreciate how awful it is better than you do. That’s why I take someone with pipe bombs very seriously.

The Difference Between Free People and Weenies

Posted on by

Been away for a couple of days, and I see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects are to be tried in a New York City court. And I can think of nothing more just, more perfect, than to let these trials go forward in the city that has waited so long for justice.

And naturally righties don’t like it, because deep down, they are all weenies. Glenn Greenwald is exactly right:

This is literally true: the Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

These same pathetic cowards scream perpetually about “freedom” but don’t know what it means. They’ve supported torture, suspension of habeas corpus for American citizens, warrantless surveillance, “black sites,” all because these atrocities are supposed to make us safer. But bring four suspects to New York for trial and they whine like this:

The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.

As an eyewitness to the collapse of the towers, I sincerely believe I speak for the enormous majority of people who were present at the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when I say to the sniveling righties — please stop being so pathetic. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Thanks much.

The Scare Party

Posted on by

I didn’t watch the President’s national security speech today, but I take it he made a firm commitment to closing Guantanamo in spite of the lack of confidence from congressional Democrats. Good for you, Mr. President.

I also understand many people watched a split screen duet between the President and former Veep Dick Cheney. This manufactured showdown was nothing other than a gimmick to pull in a few more viewers.

But we’ve got serious issues to consider; we don’t need Sideshow Dick, thanks.

Speaking of Dick — yesterday Glenn Greenwald published a post titled “Terrorists in Prison: is there anything the Right doesn’t fear?”

The answer appears to be, maybe tapioca pudding, but I’m not placing any bets on the pudding.

What’s being called “a four-man homegrown terror cell” was busted in New York. The four were unsophisticated hoodlums with no connections to any other terrorist group, and authorities have had them under surveillance for several months. The FBI helped orchestrate their “plot” and even sold them some phony bomb that the four planted around a synagogue.

And faster’n you can say “booga booga!,” the entire Right Blogosphere went into panic meltdown. I swear, just today, Pam Atlas used up her annual budget of boldface italic exclamation points!!! And throughout the Right there are CAPS LOCKS THAT WILL NEVER COME UNSTUCK AGAIN !!!

As Steve M. says, the system worked. Let’s panic!

Did I mention the four hoodlums were jailhouse converts to Islam? You get the picture.

Yet the pathetic, sniveling cowardice of the Right is nowhere nearly as pathetic and as sniveling as some other cowardice — namely, that of congressional Dems. As Glenn says,” There’s no more mewling, craven, subservient entity in the United States than the Senate Democratic caucus.”

Rachel Maddow was at her most brilliant last night explaining that Dems have been terrorized by “Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi (O Fortuna)” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Now, that’s pathetic.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Pakistan

Posted on by

I apologize for writing short posts the past couple of days. I’m kind of swamped right now.

Also, a reminder that tonight at 9 pm EST I’ll be on web radio at Buzz Tok. You can participate in the show by going here. The planned topic is the politics of torture.

On to Pakistan — Apparently the Taliban have overrun large parts of Pakistan. There is genuine concern that Pakistan — nuclear-armed Pakistan, mind you — will devolve into a territory of warlord-led fiefdoms, sort of like Somalia.

The resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan is not a new thing. This has been unfolding since the end of 2001, when much of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan were able to escape into Pakistan. I remember sitting in on a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006, and Thomas Friedman and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan talked about the Taliban, and how it was a really bad problem for Pakistan, and getting worse.

If you want to say that Pervez Musharraf also was a really bad problem for Pakistan I hear you, but the point is that events in Pakistan now have been building since 2001, at least (some would say you have to go back about 50 years to find the beginning of the story) and what’s happening now is the fruit of more than seven years of failure to deal with it realistically.

And if I had the time I would love to write a long analysis of how and why the Taliban problem wasn’t dealt with realistically. However, the short version is that the Bushies’ simple-minded worldview caused them to sort everyone into two piles, labeled “Evildoers” and “BFFs,” and Musharraf was in the BFFs pile. This in turn led to all kinds of misjudgments and miscalculations about Pakistan. As I said, I wish I had more time to go into it.

Today I noticed some rightie sites expressing new alarm about Pakistan, as if everything in Pakistan had been just hunky-dory until recently. But I also notice leftie sites aren’t dealing with it much at all, yet. Yes, it’s complicated enough to give one a headache, but it’s important.

A few days ago I was chatting with someone with a large presence on the left side of the Web — I won’t name names — and when I mentioned the Taliban in Pakistan he brushed my remark aside — oh, the Taliban are not a problem, he said. I don’t believe this is a majority view on the Left, but I don’t think it’s an uncommon one, either.

Listen, folks, just because the Bush Administration said the Taliban is dangerous doesn’t mean it isn’t.

What should the Obama Administration do? I don’t have a clue. There may be little we can do, at this point.

An aside — many news stories coming out of Pakistan mention Swat or the Swat Valley. I have some historic background on Swat on the other blog.