"NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery"
A mystery? Really? Might I suggest Islamo-fascist fantasy world thinking? Hmm?
The article explores the mystery surrounding the attack:
Until recently, his life in the U.S. appeared enviable. He had a master's degree from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, a job as a budget analyst for a marketing firm in Norwalk, Conn., two children and a well-educated wife who posted his smiling picture and lovingly called him "my everything" on a social networking website.
But shortly after becoming a U.S. citizen a year ago, he gave up his job, stopped paying his mortgage and told a real estate agent to let the bank take the house because he was returning to Pakistan.
Once there, according to investigators, he traveled to the lawless Waziristan region and learned bomb making at a terrorist training camp.
In court papers, investigators said Shahzad returned to the U.S. on Feb. 3, moved into an apartment in a low-rent section of Bridgeport, then set about acquiring materials and an SUV he bought with cash in late April. They said that after his arrest, Shahzad confessed to rigging the bomb and driving it into Times Square. He also acknowledged getting training in Pakistan, the filing said.
Gosh! This is a mystery! Why would some Presbyterian immigrant success story throw his life away and go all berserk like that?
But our leaders and newscasters are working diligently to unravel the mystery. Maybe someone upset with Obamacare? Or, please, please, a "tea bagger!" Surely, the guy is a lone nut with no connection to any, uh--er, Islam.
Some, not steeped in the deep and nuanced knowledge of our reality-based community, might suspect a pattern emerging in our history with these strange lone wolves who come out of nowhere to scream--literally or just figuratively--"Allahu Akbar!" before leaving the pavement bloody with Infidel blood (or trying to).
Certainly, it would be inconvenient for the Pakistanis to admit to any deeper connection with the broader strand within Islam of Islamism (or Islamo-fascism if you want a less PC term):
Pakistan's army does not believe the Pakistani Taliban were behind the Times Square bomb attempt as the insurgent group has claimed, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
No matter that the Pakistani Taliban group may have have made the claim video before the attack, given the circumstance of the release. They might have to answer unpleasant questions about "their" jihadis.
Similarly, Compassionate Americans might have to answer unpleasant questions about their assumptions that if we just act nicer to the jihadis in the Moslem world, understand their grievances, and extend an open hand, we can all just chat about these unfortunate differences we have and wrap it up in a beer summit. They hate our cartoons and short skirts that expose enticing, earthquake-causing ankle flesh? Well, we hate their murdering of our people! We can surely hammer out a compromise at a friendly beer summit chatfest! Well, without the beer part, of course. No point in provoking these--ah--"excitable" types, eh? Why take chances?
The reality is that such appeasement encourages our enemies:
Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing was yet more proof.
We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don't want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam.
The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn't work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Muslim radicals that we respect their views.
Our counterfactual assumption is that, if we're really, really nice, the fanatics will stop being grumpy and blowing us up. But Islamist extremists haven't read our actions (or inactions) as an admirable exercise in tolerance. They read our bowing and scraping and apologizing as weakness.
For the last year and a half, our jihadi enemies haven't smelled hope and change in the air. They've smelled fear and weakness. We can see the results, though so far the death toll hasn't reached 9/11 levels.
But they will--and more if the enemy gets its way. They hate us that much and believe in their cause that deeply.There really isn't that much to discuss.
Let me add what I hope is the obvious caveat, if you've paid attention to my blog the last 8 years: Islam is not our problem.
But Islam has a cancer of Islamism within it that is our problem--and Islam's problem, too, given the body count. And the society that breeds recruits and too much sympathy for these jihadis simply must cure itself before this long war can end.
But until Moslems do reform Islam to eliminate the jihadi strain--with our help, I hope--we have to remember that the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi. That's the reality of the situation, and we need to base our policy on the fact that the jihadis want us dead or submissive, and no amount of outreach will persuade the jihadis to leave us alone and let us live in peace.
Kill them all.
UPDATE: Lileks wonders why our media and policial elites won't listen to what the jihadis tell us:
Mayor Bloomberg took time out from the thankless task of combatting salt consumption to say this:
“If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything,” he said.
You have to weep. Bloomberg could have heard a bomber shout I DO THIS FOR ALLAH before he blew himself up, and hizzoner would wonder: alla what? Alla my friends who are having their Medicare reduced? Alla these good reasons which I will not, unfortunately, describe, as I am now chum?
CNN chatterboxes later ruminated that the fellow had a hard life in the U.S. — couldn’t get a good job, had his house foreclosed on. Granted. But this has happened to many during the Great Recession, and 99.99999% don’t sit down and conclude: “Well, it’s Pakistan for fertilizer bomb training, then.” CBS News runs a headline: “Faisal Shahzad’s Motive Shrouded in Mystery,” which is like doing a story on people lining up for the iPad launch and wondering why so many nerds formed an orderly line outside a store. It must be terribly frustrating to the jihadis: we’re completely upfront about our goals and rationales, and they still don’t take us seriously. What do we have to do?
They’ll think of something.
Yeah, how bad does it have to get before some of our fellow Americans get the idea that the jihadis really do hate us--all of us, and not just Red State Americans?
This RAND report comes just in time to examine all those lone wolves. And can we finally say that outreach to be Headlopping and Suicice Bombing Community just won't work? Given that the jihadis seem immune to the soothing balms of hope and change, can even the reality-based community conclude thate we are dealing with barbarians?
