For once, Oregon’s national (and potentially international) news story this weekend is not football or the latest domestic nutjob in a long line from the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to Tonya Harding. Surprisingly, it’s a Muslim terrorism story . . . at least, ostensibly.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old boy born in Somalia and until recently a student at Oregon State University (sorry about that Stanford game, boys), was arrested by Portland City Police and the FBI after trying to detonate what he thought was a bomb in a van parked next to the city’s “downtown living room,” Pioneer Courthouse Square, as the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, attended by thousands, was about to begin.
Pioneer Square is five blocks from my apartment, as the crow flies; eight if you walk the blocks properly. I was probably at home at the time. I’ve never gone to the tree lighting ceremony, though I’ve attended dozens of other events at the square over the years, including the Millennium party of New Year’s, 1999-2000.
Frankly, I don’t feel any more or less safe than I did two days ago. So far, I haven’t seen any sign that this kid posed a real threat, despite all the noise the feds and the media are making about his grandiose notions. The New York Times reported that in 2009 Mohamud made e-mail contact with a man believed to be a recruiter for terrorism. The man had returned to the Middle East from the U.S. -- first to Yemen, then to northwest Pakistan --but apparently he did not continue to respond Mohamud’s communications, let alone offer him assistance. The Oregonian reports that the “terrorist recruiter” referred Mohamud to another contact, but that person never responded to the boy’s messages.
Since then, the suspect’s only contacts have been with an undercover FBI agent posing as a terrorist contact. Now, I wouldn’t defend the kid on the basis of entrapment. It’s clear he meant business: he chose the Christmas holiday, he chose the event, and he wanted a bomb that would kill a lot of people. It’s just not clear, thus far, that he would ever have acquired the know-how or wherewithal to go through with his plan without advice and support from somebody. Actual terrorists never offered it; only the FBI did. I’ve pored over the news stories that have come out since, and though it's a little hard to read between the lines this early in the game, so far I haven’t seen anything that says the critical pieces of the puzzle -- the bomb components, real or fake -- were obtained by Mohamud from anyone but U.S. government employees.
Let’s retain a little perspective, folks. You’re still more likely to be killed by a drunk driver this holiday season than an act of terrorism. The authorities should have scotched this loser quietly. But that would have destroyed a golden opportunity to throw a new scare into the American public and justify the billions of dollars we’ve thrown at the Department of Homeland Security the past seven years, as well as other federal enforcement bodies.
They needed this kind of story badly, given the bad press the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had been getting the past few weeks for its new airport screening measures. Never mind that the TSA would have done nothing to stop this kind of threat; simple-minded Americans who still think invading Iraq was a rational response to 9/11 will probably feel better about being groped by their fellow citizens this December.
The problem I see with these noisy stories about “the success of the government’s war on terrorism” is that it mainly provides lessons for future nutjobs on how to avoid making similarly stupid mistakes. Real, committed terrorists are going to succeed now and then, no matter what anyone does; I don’t see that there’s much we can do about them.
If the U.S. government is in fact tracking and catching those types, more power to ’em; but it should go about it quietly, because that’s the way to keep real terrorists and harmless nutjobs off balance. Terrorizing the American public over relatively harmless religious fanatics like Mohamud or screwups like Richard Reid (remember the “tennis-shoe bomber”?) is, in my opinion, counterproductive and unprofessional.
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I wonder to this day what a person has to do in order to be called a MUSLIM terrorist. The Ft Hood gunman yelling 'allah akbar' while he gunned down dozens of Americans wasn't enough. Then this 19 yr old MUSLIM man suddenly becomes just a '19 yr old boy' in your ‘swing’ at an objective treatment of this issue. Left on the 'cutting room floor' are some very important facts that didn't make into your story David:
ReplyDelete1. It's entirely disingenuous to write an entire story about a MUSLIM extremist and in all of the 800 or so words you only use the word “MUSLIM” one time in the first paragraph and just as soon as it’s out there …you shoot it down with a “not really” … Why? The fact that this man is a MUSLIM extremist who went to one of our better High Schools (Westview) is a huge part of this story …after all it wasn’t some misc. HS kid with a homicidal streak trying to blow up innocent people was it? This was a MUSLIM man who had plotted for over 1 year to blow up 10,000+ people at a Christian event signifying the start of the holiday season centered around the celebration of the birth of Christ!
2. Like the Ft Hood terrorist…when this MUSLIM man was apprehended he was frantically dialing the cell phone number that he thought would detonate the bomb he had diligently bought parts for and assembled and put into position for the maximum kill…he too was shouting out “Allah Akbar” where was that in your treatment of this topic?
The reason you don’t feel any safer is because you, like so many others, see the threat of MUSLIM extremists as being something that doesn’t happen here in Portland. Worse yet you still may be in a state of denial over the FACT that MUSLIMS are the source of this desperate need to kill as many innocent men, women and children….as possible. The new TSA rules are just side shows for the main event, which is the sad truth that we are at war with ISLAMIC extremists here and everywhere. Isn’t it time we all realigned our preconceived notions and wishful thinking with reality, and stopped denying this inconvenient truths?
I say he's not a terrorist, after measuring his status and actions against the definitions contained in U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d). Who knows if he's a Muslim? He obviously thinks he is, but I have yet to hear that he was acting at the direction of anyone but his own crazed mind (with some encouragement from the FBI), or with the assistance and support of any international terrorist network or even a single suspected terrorist overseas. From what I've read so far, any potential overseas terrorism contacts he might have had blew him off as a lightweight, which is part of the reason I do, too.
ReplyDeleteHe's a nutty college kid. Almost all of us have done things around that age that we regret later -- less grandiose in design, certainly, but in the end, Mohamud caused less pain than most of the rest of us have ... not for lack of passion but for lack of know-how or substantive terrorist support.
What if the FBI had gone to his parents a year ago and said, "look, we have evidence your son has been trying to contact suspected terrorist networks overseas and get over to Pakistan for training." They would have been shocked and appalled, and might well have taken care of this right then and there -- cut off his college allowance and made him get a job, for heaven sake. But no, the FBI wanted to play this out to make the kid seem like far more of a threat than he ever had to be, and possibly ever could have been, because it makes the FBI look good and inspires many of its U.S. constituents out there to believe things are a lot less dangerous out there than is truly the case.
It's kind of similar to the way the police escalate a confrontation and start shooting, even when an unarmed guy is running away from them or down on the ground, because they're excited and feeling powerful or threatened.
Which leads me to conclude: the FBI doesn't necessarily have OUR interests at heart here; they're pursuing THEIR interests . . . and the two do not always coincide.
Finally, Cameron, a word of advice: you'd be a much more effective debater if you made a greater effort to address what people say, specifically, rather than speculating on what they might think. The latter is easy; at best, it's inaccurate and too often digressive, at worst, it's dishonest.