Thursday, August 10, 2006

An early reaction from the right blogosphere to today's news:

There's nothing to see here folks. Please don't connect any dots from Dearborn to Cairo and Montana, to London and Birmingham. You'll find nothing in common among those who "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." ... Please connect no dots. You might find yourself called bad names; on the other hand, you just might find yourself alive....

What's wrong with this rant? Oh, just this: Every link points to a story of the authorities pusuing and detaining people suspected of being tied to Islamicist terrorism.

Obviously, the authorities are looking for jihadists -- obviously, in other words, they are "connecting the dots" this blogger wants them to connect.

Ah, but here's what they aren't doing:

We hope the authorities entertain us this morning, as they have in most of the instances above, by resolutely failing to say a word about Islamic terrorism, and by calling the latest round of misguided ones "youths" and such....

A sentiment echoed by this right-wing blogger:

I am sick to death of tiptoeing around this issue of the true nature of our enemies.

... the time has come to put away childish things and grow up. Our enemies will not give us much leeway to indulge us our puerile need to universalize this threat lest we offend someone. They have no such problem in identifying who they see as the enemy. Why should we?


So the problem isn't that those suspected of waging jihad aren't being pursued and captured. It's that when they're pursued and captured, the authorities fail to say, "Taken into custody today were a number of MOOOOOSLIMS!!! DIRTY FILTHY EVIL GOAT-BUGGERING MOOOOOSLIMS!!!"

People who race-bait and do nothing else to stop terrorism are whining about people who are working hard to stop terrorism but don't race-bait. I know whose side I'm on.

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