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June 23, 2006

Thwarted Miami Terrorists “Had Given Their Lives to Allah”

Just a few days ago, in Reason magazine, Jesse Walker opined that home-grown Islamic terrorism in America was a dud:

It hardly matters whether isolated murderers are driven by their interpretation of the Koran, by some deficiency in their brains, or by any other explanation for their deeds. You can deal with them the way you deal with any other solitary criminals. There is real danger in an organized network of terrorists, and there is real danger in a substantial subculture willing to engage in unorganized terror. But attacks like the hit-and-run in North Carolina, the airport shootings in L.A., and this maybe-Muslim murder fit neither category. Bloody and evil as they are, their chief effect is to make jihad seem mundane.

Today we have news of a thwarted terrorist attack based in Miami:

MIAMI (AP) - Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids tied to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations.

...The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

Walker's way of thinking is doubtless what the French told themselves while letting radical Islamists immigrate in vast numbers, leading to the recent riots there; it was doubtless what the British told themselves, leading to last year's terrorist bombings in London; it was doubtless what the Canadians told themselves, leading to the recently thwarted terrorist attacks there. And here, it's what Jesse Walker and others would like us to believe -- leading to these just-thwarted terrorist attacks based in Miami.

Why would Walker think that a pattern he can see in every other nation that's permitted immigration of radical Islamists, wouldn't be repeated here? In any case, his logic appears to have been utterly disproven.

What mosques were these men going to, that taught them to kill Americans? Such mosques could reasonably be identified and shut down.