| It turns out that Jason Hamilton, the Moscow, Idaho, shooter, was a card-carrying member of Aryan Nations.
After shooting his wife, Hamilton targeted the dispatch center in the Latah County Courthouse, killing one police officer and wounding two others before retreating to a nearby church, where he killed a sexton. According to Dave Niewert, that's probably a sign that Hamilton's rampage was at least in part politically motivated:
What's clear is that Hamilton fully intended to take as many people with him as possible; that's why he began by targeting the dispatcher's office, where he knew he would get police response. And considering his extremist background, it is certain this was intended as some kind of political statement. It was, by most definitions, an act of domestic terrorism.
This news followed on the heels of the busted-up Christian napalm bomb plot. And that's not all, of course. Rick Perlstein recalls other recent incidents involving right-wing groups and individuals and urges the right to cease their Islam-o-hysteria:
Stop it. Stop it right now. Stop pretending Islamicists - or environmentalists or animal rights activists (which are, ridiculously, federal law enforcement and non-governmental terrorism-watchers' next most obsessive concern) - are the only imminent terrorist threat to our nation.
Two things come instantly to mind. |
| First, remember all the brouhaha over racial profiling? Here's the Missoulian:
Of course, many screening measures are intended to dance around an uncomfortable reality. The primary terrorist threat comes not from the general public. Our society's sensibilities and laws, however, don't permit us to focus on that specific subpopulation because it would seem discriminatory. Instead, we screen everybody, conduct random searches and, soon perhaps, even employ high-tech machines trying to divine their hidden intentions. The broad-brush approach makes it less likely to detect a terrorist, not more.
The problem we have is that we are unwilling as a society to acknowledge that we are at war with people who are more homogenous than the general U.S. population. Because of this, using a person's ethnic heritage as one of many factors to decide if a person should be inconvenienced a little more than the 80-year-old grandmother isn't discrimination. It is affirmative action. We have as a society decided that is OK to consider such things as race, when it benefits the individual and society; well, using a little affirmative action in screening will also benefit the individual and society. It will allow us to focus scarce time and resources screening the people who are members of the class that is the most likely threat. Those who are members of that subpopulation but have no hostile intent may sacrifice a little extra inconvenience from time to time for the greater good, but they along with the rest of us derive the benefit of a safer air transportation system and a more efficient screening process.
(Did you write this, Steve Woodruff?)
What?s apparent here is that the only "uncomfortable reality" at play in this editorial is that racism no doubt played a role in its composition. It's now become "uncomfortably" obvious that a real and present terrorist threat comes from home.
And now you know why racial profiling doesn't work. If you target the wrong race or religion or other arbitrary genetic feature, you're less likely to catch the terrorists with the "right" color skin or religion or other arbitrarily selected genetic feature.
The second thing is, that these recent events should put to rest any notion that there?s some mysterious element within the religion of Islam that makes perfectly reasonable people bat sh*t. But Christians can be crazy, too, as evidenced in Glenn Greenwald's recent post on right-wing reaction to a poll on U.S. Muslims:
A 2005 Pew poll, for instance, found that large majorities of Christians believe in torture -- not "enhanced interrogation techniques," but torture....
[snip]
And majorities of white Christians -- Catholics, evangelicals and protestants -- believe in torture not merely in the improbable-in-the-extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario; rather, they believe in torture as a matter of course (i.e., more than "rarely" -- either "often or "sometimes")....Think about how depraved that is: what kind of religious individual affirmatively believes that people should be routinely tortured, including people who have never been proven to have done anything wrong?
Furthermore, 42% of Christians consider themselves "Christians first," not "Americans first."
And in a post today, Greenwald notes that Americans in general are much more likely to support the killing of civilians for political purposes (51%) than U.S. Muslims (13%) and even Iranians (16%).
Do I think that all American Christians are sadistic terrorists? Of course not. That would be a simplistic generalization based on a few isolated events. In other words, the same type of generalization that has created the idea of a worldwide "culture war" pitting "Islamicists" against "civilized nations."
Were it so simple.
Unfortunately the world is a lot more complex. Yes, religious fundamentalism - of all kinds - with its good versus evil dichotomy and promise of eternal rewards for its loyal followers, does exacerbate regional and cultural conflicts. Yes, at different times in history violence stems from specific religion - just as Islamic countries in the Middle East were known for their tolerance and culture in medieval society, so was Christianity known for its brutality and aggression. Culture, politics, religion, race, and poverty all play a part. As does individual action. One man with a gun can change the course of history.
So let's fight terrorism realistically. Through policing, not culture wars. Through prevention, not eradication. And, above all, let's remember that the best path to fighting terror lies not through anger and authoritarianism, but with civility, diversity, and democracy. |
