Category Archives: Terrorism

The Deadly Democrats

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David Ignatius’s column today explains jihadists’ reactions to the Obama election.

Before the election, the radical Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradhawi even issued a fatwa supporting John McCain: “Personally, I would prefer for the Republican candidate, McCain, to be elected. This is because I prefer the obvious enemy who does not hypocritically [conceal] his hostility toward you . . . to the enemy who wears a mask [of friendliness].”

Obama makes the jihadists nervous because he is an appealing new face whose ascension undermines the belief that Islam and the West are locked in an inescapable clash of civilizations. “The Democrats kill you slowly without you noticing it. . . . They are like a snake whose touch is not felt until its poison enters your body,” observes Qaradhawi.

Maybe the “like a snake” line was published before, but I didn’t see it. Although even I think Qaradhawi gives the Dems too much credit, it paints an interesting picture: The Dems are cunning and subtle; Republicans are hotheaded fools who react with their emotions instead of their brains.

The real danger of Islamic terrorism, which the war hawk Right is too foolish to see, is not what they can do to us. It’s what they can provoke us into doing to ourselves.

“Even in the Arab world, Obama is very popular,” explains Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French scholar of Islam. “The global jihadists leaned toward McCain because they hoped the confrontation would get worse.”

Four more years of Bush was just what they wanted, and they didn’t get it. On the other hand, the financial crisis is cheering them considerably. Part of Osama bin Laden’s original plan was to lure us into an expensive war in the Middle East that would topple our economy, remember.

Filiu says that among radical Muslims, there is a growing belief that we are entering an apocalyptic “Battle of the End of Time” foretold in a famous saying of the prophet Muhammad. This hadith predicted that the climax would come in the land known as Khorasan, which today includes Afghanistan, the tribal areas of Pakistan and parts of Iran. Filiu has gathered evidence of this Muslim eschatology in a new book called “L’Apocalypse dans l’Islam,” which will be published soon in English.

Maybe they and the extremist Christian fundies can build an apocalyptic theme park where they can act out their fantasies without killing the rest of us.

Unrelated, but a good read: Tod Lindberg, “The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left.” And Frank Rich is a hoot today.

The Anthrax Guy

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You’ve probably heard by now that a suspect in the anthrax poisonings of 2001 committed suicide just before he allegedly was to be charged. How … convenient.

Glenn Greenwald covers this in minute detail, so I will lean on him for background. As Glenn says, it appears the anthrax was being dispersed from a top U.S. Army scientist working in a U.S. government lab. And the anthrax certainly added to the climate of fear that infested the nation after 9/11, which in turn benefited … well, you know. Y’all are champs at connecting dots; you don’t need me to do it for you.

A Lathering of Beagles

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Someone who may have just been off his meds — happens a lot in New York — tosses a small, improvised incendiary device into an Army Recruiting Center in Times Square in the middle of the night. So now the Gathering of Eagles — the same geniuses who rallied to protect the Vietnam Memorial from an imaginary threat last year — are going to rally in Times Square this Saturday to take a stand against domestic terrorism and anarchy.

No one was injured in the Times Square incident, and such vandalism doesn’t seem to be part of a trend here in NYC. However, in the past several months a number of innocent people around the country have lost their lives in mass shootings on campuses and in shopping malls. If they’re so fired-up against anarchy and violence, why aren’t the beagles lathered about that?

And note to the beagles: Roping off part of Times Square on a Saturday will get lots of people highly annoyed at you.

Hallucination du jour:

This criminal action against the recruiting station in Times Square has the potential of leading a national downturn in the minds of those who disagree with the war.

Last I heard, the NYPD thought the bombing might be related to an October explosion at the Mexican Consulate and a 2005 bombing at the British consulate. As I said, probably somebody off his meds. Maybe the beagles ought to be rallying for better medical care for psychotics.

Unrelated: nice post at Prairie Weather

Protection, Projection, Rejection

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Yesterday the House broke for a week’s recess without renewing the terrorist surveillance authority — the so-called “Protect America Act” — in spite of President Bush’s warnings that failure to renew the act would leave America vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Glenn Greenwald says,

What can one even say about this quote, included in Carl Hulse’s NYT article on the Democrats’ refusal yesterday to pass the Senate’s FISA bill before expiration of the Protect America Act:

    “I think there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world that the United States Congress did not do its duty today,” said Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas.

This is the kind of pure, unadulterated idiocy — childish, cartoonish and creepy — that Democrats for years have been allowing to bully them into submission, govern our country, and dismantle our Constitution. Outside of Andy McCarthy, Mark Steyn and their roving band of paranoid right-wing bloggers who can’t sleep at night because they think (and hope) that there are dark, primitive “jihadi” super-villains hiding under their beds — along with the Very Serious pundit class which proves their Seriousness by placing blind faith in the fear-mongering pronouncements and demands of our military and intelligence officials for more unchecked power — nobody cares about adolescent Terrorist game-playing like this any longer. In the real world, it doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked for some time.

Hindrocket the Power Tool dutifully trots out the standard spin:

Not Serious

About national security, that is. Over the last 36 hours, Congressional Democrats have again demonstrated a casual, even frivolous attitude toward their Constitutional duty to assist in keeping Americans safe from attack.

As Jesus’ General says, expiration of the PAA puts our National Security services in a terrible bind. “It forces our them to partially comply with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.” I feel vulnerable already.

Also this week the Senate passed a bill that would ban torture. Dan Froomkin wrote yesterday:

Who are we as a nation? Are we who we used to be? Did one terrorist attack really change all that? Can it be changed back?

Those, at heart, are the questions raised by the Senate’s passage yesterday of a bill that would ban harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA — a bill already passed by the House, and a bill President Bush has vowed to veto.

The debate is not just about waterboarding. It’s about whether other tactics — such as prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mock executions, the use of attack dogs, the withholding of food, water and medical care and the application of electric shocks — should be part of our official interrogation toolkit.

Whether you call them torture or not, they are undeniably cruel. They are undeniable assaults on human dignity.

They are all prohibited by the Army Field Manual, which covers all military interrogations. They are all off limits to the FBI. Now Congress wants the CIA to adhere to the same restrictions.

But Bush says no.

The propagation of our values has long been a hallmark of American foreign policy. Chief among those values has been respect for human dignity. But the message we’ve been sending lately is altogether different. How can we tell other countries to respect human dignity when we have made it optional for our own government? When our official policy is that the ends justify the means?

Um, when the Wingnuts took over? Just a guess.

Asking for Trouble

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This week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was denied a visit to Ground Zero. Ahmadinejad asked that he be allowed to lay a wreath at the site while he visits New York next week. Today ABC News reports that Ahmadinejad may go anyway, permission or no permission, and has even announced when. I can see all kinds of ways this would turn out badly, and I hope someone talks some sense into Ahmadinejad before then.

But Ahmadinejad is not the only one who needs to chill. The ever irresponsible Michelle Malkin is fanning the flames and trying to organize a “welcoming party.” And if she incites enough rage and recklessness to get someone killed, she will be equally outraged if anyone says it is her fault.

When the Good Lord was handing out common sense, Malkin was out hunting down exclamation marks.

No sooner had word gotten out last week that New York City was considering the request than politicians of both parties went into spasms of outrage. There was such a piling on of outrage you’d have thought Ahmadinejad had proposed offering a human sacrifice or, worse, memorializing Muhammad Atta. As BooMan says, the piling on turned into a game of one-upmanship, with pols bragging that they were not only outraged, they were more outraged than their political opponents. (See also the Anonymous Liberal.)

At this point in the post I have to stop and declare how much I don’t like Ahmadinejad. And I really don’t, but I resent having to say it. I am, however, obliged to make it clear that I don’t like Ahmadinejad so that righties don’t show up and accuse me of being a Mahmoud lover. What I will not do is enter into a competition to prove how much I dislike Ahmadinejad or if my dislike is sufficient dislike, because insufficient dislike is tantamount to siding with the terrorists.

Please note: I dislike groupthink a lot more than I dislike Ahmadinejad.

Here’s where we go from dumb to dumber — Scott Johnson of Power Tools says that Ahmadinejad is in New York he will participate in a question and answer session with university faculty and students at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum. Johnson thinks this is a disgrace.

Columbia and President Bollinger are a disgrace. They welcome to their campus a man who is a ringleader in the seizure of American hostages, a terrorist, the president of a terrorist regime, and the representative of a regime responsible at present for the deaths of American soldiers on the field of battle. Columbia’s prattle about free speech may be a tale told by an idiot, but it signifies something. And President Bollinger is a fool who is not excused from the dishonor he brings to his institution and his fellow citizens by the fact that he doesn’t know what he is doing.

It’s true America is plagued by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Most of the Bush Administration comes to mind. But Columbia U. President Bollinger makes it clear he’s not inviting the Iranian leader over for tea and cookies. Bollinger intends to challenge Ahmadinejad on matters of terrorism, nuclear weapons, Holocaust denial, women’s rights, and other thorny issues, which I would think would be educational.

See, Scott, this is a World Leaders Forum, which I assume includes world-leaders-in-training. What World Leaders normally do is deal with other World Leaders of all stripes, and it’s good to have some laboratory experience with such things before you go out and practice World Leadership for real. Among other things, real World Leaders are not cartoons and do not go about with “Good” or “Evil” stamped on their foreheads. Real World Leaders are complicated people who probably got to be World Leaders because they are very good at handling other people. Even evil World Leaders can be charming. Back in the 1930s lots of people — right wingers, mostly — thought Hitler was a reasonable fellow. I remember reading that the first time Harry Truman met Joseph Stalin, Truman thought Stalin was an OK guy. This World Leadership thing isn’t as easy as it looks.

But righties have always been advocates for premeditated ignorance. I recall back in the 1950s and 1960s American conservatives would, from time to time, erupt into outrage mode upon learning that American colleges required students to learn something about Communism. Since Communism was the major threat to the planet at the time, one would think knowing something about it would be useful. But no; teaching students about Communism is teaching Communism. And Communism was, apparently, so inherently evil that merely learning about it was corrupting. Better to stay ignorant.

And it’s better not to get too close to whackjob World Leaders, even in a classroom, so that when the time comes that you actually have to deal with whackjob World Leaders you won’t know what you are doing and will have no recourse but to bomb them.

See how that works?

But back to the Ground Zero visit — I’m reminded of a story. Back in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev toured America and expressed a desire to visit Disneyland. He was denied entrance to the Magic Kingdom, probably for security reasons, or maybe the Seven Dwarfs threatened a protest strike. In any event, Khrushchev’s disappointment became an international, big-bleeping-deal Issue with the bulk of global sympathy siding with Khrushchev. And some American editorialists suggested the experience might have taught the Communist dictator something about the superiority of capitalism and the American way of life.

Here I have to enter another disclaimer, that I am not comparing Ground Zero to a theme park. I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and am, therefore, better acquainted with what happened there than Michelle Malkin or anyone else who merely watched on television. I’ve seen Ground Zero many times since. It doesn’t look quite as sad as it used to, since they’ve finally started building stuff. Still, seeing the place might have given Ahmadinejad a sense of the scale of the disaster that photographs cannot provide. Maybe someone could fly him over the site in an unmarked helicopter. It might give him a glimmer of an idea why Americans are hostile about terrorism. Just don’t put out a press release this is happening, or some whackjob rightie will show up in Manhattan to shoot down helicopters.

Police Story

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Kevin’s headline tells the whole story —

German terror plot thwarted without David Addington

Three Muslims who allegedly were planning attacks on U.S. facilities in Germany were picked up by German authorities after what appears to have been a police-type investigation. It’s possible these guys are real, undiluted terrorists, as opposed to the watered-down ones the Bushies like to entertain us with from time to time.

Andrew Sullivan:

Some obvious points: these men are educated, two of three are German nationals, all seem to have been trained not in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a putative ally. It is hard to see how the Iraq war – whether a failure or a success – would have any impact on this tiny cell’s attempt at mass murder in the name of God. This is simply the religious violence we have to contend with for the indefinite future. All we can do is what the Germans did: keep up surveillance (with protections against abuse), and run as many to ground as we can.

Oh, but that sounds like police work. That will never satisfy the Right, even if it’s effective.

Michelle Malkin Hates Our Freedoms

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Today a jury found Jose Padilla guilty of two counts —

Count 1 – Conspiracy to Murder, Kidnap, and Maim Persons in a Foreign Country as part of a conspiracy to advance violent jihad
Count 2 – Conspiracy to Provide Material Support for Terrorists

I wouldn’t have a quarrel with the verdict had Padilla’s rights as a citizen been observed. If there was evidence showing him conspiring with terrorists, certainly an arrest and trial was warranted. But his rights as a citizen were not observed. There is no justice here.

Utterly oblivious to what has actually happened here, and that what was done to Padilla is a betrayal of everything this country used to stand for, Michelle Malkin is having an orgasm of celebratory righteousness all over her blog. Don’t look unless you have a strong stomach. She doesn’t come out and say that the verdict justified shredding the Fourth Amendment and almost four years of torture, but she sure as hell isn’t showing any remorse either. And her Hot Air partner Allahpundit cheers — it’s a “big win for Bush.”

Malkin and Allahpundit hate America.

[Updated here.]

Inflammatory

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A flaming SUV crashed into the main terminal of Glasgow airport, MSNBC says.

In Glasgow, the green SUV barreled toward the building at full speed shortly after 3 p.m., hitting security barriers before crashing into the glass doors and exploding, witnesses said. Two men jumped out of the burning vehicle, one of them engulfed in flames, they said.

“The car came speeding past at about 30 mph. It was approaching the building quickly,” said Scott Leeson, who was nearby at the time. “Then the driver swerved the car around so he could ram straight in to the door. He must have been trying to smash straight through.” …

… Passengers fled running and screaming from the busy terminal, Margaret Hughes told the British Broadcasting Corp. “There was black smoke gushing out where the car had obviously been driven into the airport,” she said.

Flames and black smoke rose from the vehicle outside the main entrance. Police said it was unclear if anyone was injured. Other passengers were stranded, with at least one airplane grounded on the runway, the BBC said. …

… “The jeep is completely on fire and it exploded not long after. It exploded at the entrance to the terminal,” witness Stephen Clarkson told the BBC. “It may have been an explosion of petrol in the tank because it was not a massive explosion.”

Two men—one of them engulfed in flames—were in the SUV, witnesses told BBC News executive Helen Boaden, who was at the airport at time. She described the men as South Asian.

Larry Johnson comments:

Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate a nuclear blast has occurred at Glasgow’s international airport. No one has seen the mushroom cloud or heard the blast, but something by God is happening and it must be terrible. There is smoke and fire. In fact, a car is on fire. It must be Al Qaeda. Only Al Qaeda knows how to set themselves on fire inside a car. Please. Flee to the hills (leave you doors unlocked). Oh the humanity!

As events unfold I’m simply asking that folks take a big deep breath and try to keep things in perspective. Are there jihadist extremists in the world who are willing to kill innocents? Absolutely. Are they amenable to negotiation? No. I am not in the, “have you hugged a terrorist today” camp. However, we need to stop equating their hatred with actual capability.

If today’s events at Glasgow prove to be linked to the two non-events yesterday in London, then we should heave a sigh of relief. We may be witnessing the implosion of takfiri jihadists–religious fanatics who are incredibly inept. While I am not an explosives expert I am good friends with one of the world’s foremost explosives experts. Propane tanks and petrol (gas for us Americans) can produce a dandy flame and a mighty boom but these are not the tools for making a car bomb long the lines of what we see detonating on a daily basis in Iraq.

My main beef remains that much of the cable news media reacts to this nonsense like a fifty year old guy on Viagra or Cialis–they pop major wood. And the same warnings are appropriate–an erection lasting more than four hours may be harmful. Amen.

Thursday a single explosion killed five U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, and I don’t see the media or the wingnuts flame about that.

I do take terrorist attacks seriously, even inept ones. I live in New York, remember. Episodes like this are what make me crazy about people who still support the Iraq war — the “why don’t you want to fight al Qaeda?” whackjobs. If that’s who we were fighting in Iraq they might have an argument. But most of al Qaeda is sitting safe and sound in Pakistan, or elsewhere, just watching us shoot ourselves in the foot in Iraq. The bulk of the violence there is between Sunni and Shi’ia militants, not al Qaeda, and both those groups are getting very good at playing the U.S. to do some of their fighting for them. Makes me crazy.

I don’t even have to look at the rightie blogs to know what they’re saying. The evil terrorists are evil, and liberals don’t understand that, which is why they don’t want to fight in Iraq. The reality that our fighting in Iraq isn’t stopping terrorist attempts in Britain doesn’t sink in.