This weekend, the FBI arrested a man for planting what he thought was an improvised explosive device outside Wrigley Field in Chicago. Sami Samir Hassoun had hoped to kill scores of spectators who were leaving Saturday night's Dave Matthews Band concert. Fortunately, Hassoun had been on the FBI's radar for quite some time - and had been provided with a dummy device incapable of exploding.
As a counter-terrorism professor, I can draw several lessons from this case: (1) successful terrorist attacks occur only when intentions are matched by capabilities, and the desired capability in this case - the bomb - continues to be a means that is just not readily available to terrorists; (2) groups do not have a monopoly on terrorism, with lone wolves like Hassoun often perpetrating acts of politically-motivated violence; and (3) there seems to be no shortage of idiot terrorists - for which we should count our blessings.
But let me not bore you with points I have made in the past.
This piece is not on the attack but rather public reactions to the attack.
I have been somewhat appalled by some of the comments I've read on Twitter regarding the Wrigleyville plot.
Here's just a sampling:
Moreover, the sarcasm of many of these tweets regarding Muslims is not just misplaced, it's inappropriate. For starters, Hassoun's motive was completely secular. The authorities have made it clear that he was not driven by extremist religious ideology. Instead, his gripe was with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
Unfortunately, that didn't stop people from making cracks at the expense of Muslims.
Wake up call: Equating terrorism with Islam is worthy of a Nobel Prize in Ignorance.
Here's a news flash: not all terrorists are Muslims! Recall Timothy McVeigh, Scott Roeder, James von Brunn, and Joseph Stack? What did they all have in common? They all killed Americans for political purposes. Oh, and none of them were Muslims.
Here's another news flash: in trying to identify violent Islamic extremists, name, nationality, race, and sex are poor predictors of terrorism. How soon some people forget Jose Padilla, Michael Finton, Carlos Bledsoe, and Colleen LaRose (a.k.a., Jihad Jane)? Furthermore, let's not forget that the deadliest terrorist attack inside the U.S. since 9/11 was committed by an American citizen - not some "alien" - and, to boot, one entrusted with a position of trust in the U.S. Army: Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
This past weekend, Nick Kristof wrote a column in the New York Times publicly apologizing to Muslims for the bigotry to which they've been subjected. Kristof's point is not lost on me.
Follow Louis Klarevas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NYUProf
Once again, the representatives of The Muslim Faith counterattack the victims and attempt to turn them into the villains. No dice. Your team pulls the same tactic on Israel every time another suicide bomber detonates himself in public, or guns down a carload of "settlers". It isn't that terrorist act that we are supposed to discuss, but the retaliation that is the TRUE crime...in your WORLD.
You have to be really simple-minded, or angry to begin with, to be led around by the nose by that kind of logic and argument. The Religion of Peace has found 1.5 billion of these kinds of unwitting, poor, repressed people to carry the Islamist Message of Bait and Switch.