For several good reasons, many of us Portlanders are having a hard time wrapping our minds around the horrific thought of a 19-year-old from the local suburbs wanting to kill and destroy. Why would Portland, of all places, be the site of a terror attack?
The “People’s Republic of Portland” — so dubbed for its liberal ways — seems so utterly different from New York, Mumbai, London, or the other places that one associates with terrorist attacks. Portland is so much smaller, light years from the figurative front lines. This is a laid-back city where the red-hot rhetoric around terrorism, Islam, the “ground zero mosque,” and the like runs cooler.
You'll recall the young suburbanite who was stopped during what he believed was a mass casualty attack on civilians.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the jihadis hate all of us. They don't care if you live in a blue state or red state. You can hate George W. Bush, despise Sarah Palin, and have fifteen tote bags in your closet for contributing to public radio. But if you are conveniently nearby and vulnerable, a jihadi will kill you. Why waste effort traveling to some distant place to find the people he's "supposed" to hate?
He'll kill you because even the most liberal, sensitive, and compassionate American who sports a "Coexist" bumper sticker right next to the "already against the next war" sticker is an unbeliever who counts no more and no less on the tally of Westerners to be killed than some soldier in Afghanistan looking for jihadis up close and personal. You're watching a Christmas-tree lighting with lots of other Christians packed shoulder-to-shoulder? Well, that's just a target-rich environment for your average hopped-up jihadi.
Nine years after 9/11, the news is finally reaching the West Coast that jihadis hate us; and if they can kill us, they will, even if you aren't some damned strutting Texan.
Your blood may run cooler in Portland, but it runs red. That's all they care about. Nine years to learn that? Now, that's sad.
