FEARING FEAR ITSELF AND HOW IT MAKES SOME PEOPLE PROPOSE UNHINGED SOLUTIONS

UPDATE I BELOW

UPDATE II BELOW

As most of us know, undercover FBI agents arrested a naturalized Somali teen who believed he was involved with like-minded terrorists to set off a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. In fact, the FBI set the teen up and arrested him for his complicit actions in what he thought was a terrorist plot. He's been taken care of; no one was ever in danger, since the FBI set this up to ensnare those whom they believe would eagerly plot to do damage to America. Well done.



However, there are always those who, instead of congratulating FBI on their work in catching this potential killer, want law enforcement to break the laws, defile our Constitution, and act like outlaws themselves. How else to understand what was posted on a blog in reaction to the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud.

"The parents of that little Somali bastard need to be deported. He needs to be put up against a wall and shot. The parents of Little Johnnie Jihad and Adam Gadahn should be banished as well. It makes me sick to my stomach that we call these people Americans. They are not Americans, they are a scabrous plague on the civilized world.


We put up with way too much in this country and it's time we stop before there is no more United States of America. Jihad against this country is treason and should be punished by death of the perp and deportation of the family.


We also need to stop all Muslim immigration. I know, the vast majority are good people, and it's a religion of peace, bla bla bla. President Bush told us so. The problem is, we're obviously incapable of sorting out the good from the bad. For the sake of our nation, we need to stop all Muslims at the border. All other civilized countries should do the same. There's trouble in Umma-Land, and only the followers of Muhammad can sort it out. Until then, we need to pull up the drawbridges and leave them to stew in their own fetid toilet."

Here's what really happened:

(CBS/AP) Last Updated 2:17 p.m. ET


"An Oregon student accused of attempting to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland was acting on his own initiative and not at the direction of any foreign terrorist organization, a law enforcement official said Saturday.


Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, hatched the plan on his own to use a cell phone to detonate what he believed was an explosive-filled van at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony Friday, according to the official, who wasn't authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on a condition of anonymity.


The official said Mohamud was very committed to the plot and alone planned the details, including where to park the van for the maximum number of casualties.


Authorities say Mohamud sent bomb components to undercover FBI agents who he believed were assembling the explosive device, but the agents supplied a fake that Mohamud tried to detonate twice via his phone.

The public was never in danger, authorities said."

(For more details of this arrest and more information on how it impacted the Muslim community, go here for the NYTimes report.)


The blogger quoted above asserts that the only way to handle this crime is for the United States to take the teen out and shoot him--you know, like communist countries and dictatorships mete out punishment--and then throw his parents out of the country. (Funny, I don't remember any similar drastic punishment being suggested for Timothy McVeigh's parents after McVeigh's terrorist bombings, or even any such punishment suggested for the parents or relatives of recent individual terrorist actions by other natural born or naturalized American citizens.)

Of course the reaction of the blogger is knee-jerk and outrageous, an insult to people who value due process and other protections provided by the US Constitution--provided even to naturalized citizens.  How quickly the blogger leaped from wanting to shoot the arrested teen without affording him his rights under the Constitution to stopping all Muslims from immigrating to this country because some radical Muslims plot against us.  This blogger apparently has no faith in the intelligence and ability of America to deal with terrorist threats, and so the first reaction the blogger suggests is for America to become an outlaw nation when dealing with these threats, real or imagined.  And worse, to bar every Muslim, guilty or not, from ever entering this country--until when?  When there are no more terrorist threats?

Seriously.  The blogger expects the United States of America to punish all Muslims by refusing them entry into this country because a small percentage of them want to hurt us.

The ultimate irony is that the blogger who posted the above-mentioned item has, just below that post, one titled "Liberty."  I've read that this type of thinking is called cognitive dissonance, and I think that is what is in play with this particular blogger, since I think he believes in the US Constitution, and he actually wrote a blog post titled "Spying on Terrorists Works, Spying on American Citizens Doesn't."

In this case, spying on this particular American did work.  And I believe this country, although facing difficult and dangerous problems, will handle those problems by being true to that document so beloved by conservatives and libertarians--when it suits their purposes.

UPDATE:

I very often read on certain blogs that the Muslim community never speaks out on terrorist plots and attacks.  Of course, that is not true, certain people repeat that lie so as to feel comfortable in their prejudices against all Muslims.  Mohamud Osam Mohamud's family has this to say about the teen:

"Mohamud's mother and father and his two sisters have remained silent since his arrest. (The Oregonian identified the parents as Mariam and Osman Barre; they reportedly split up a few years ago.) However, a prominent member of the Somali community in Portland (estimated to number 8,000) says a relative played some role in helping to put the FBI on the young man's trail — though that relative was almost certainly unaware of the scale it would assume. "Before this happened, the father informed Homeland Security and the FBI that something was going on with his son," claims Isgow Mohamed, executive director of the Northwest Somali Community Organization, who says he knows Mohamud's family well and had been in touch with them. "This a good family. The father is an engineer at Intel. This is not somebody who is on public assistance. He is a family man, a businessman, a religious man, a soccer player."



Mohamed said emphatically that Mohamud's alleged plot should not be seen as representative of Somali Americans. "First of all, we're really sorry, we do not support terror," he tells TIME. "We came to live here and not bother anyone. We left a civil war." Mohamed says he believes that Mohamud was influenced by things on the Internet and that the Somali community in Portland will continue to do its part: "We are not going to hide them. We are also Americans."

This is the family that the hysterical, knee-jerk blogger quoted above wants to deport.  Apparently he believe the US government  should deport first and gather the facts about an innocent family later.  After all, these are just brown-skinned folks--why should they enjoy the same rights as "real" Americans--y'know the kind of Americans who would throw the Constitution out the window at the first sign of danger.

I believe the term is "pant-wetter"

THE ENTIRE STORY IS HERE.

UPDATE II:

"Following his [Mohamud Osman Mohamud] arrest, the mosque he attended — the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center — released a statement saying it was “outraged” by news of the alleged plot and condemned the Mohamud’s plans. “Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center and the entire Muslim Community of Corvallis are outraged by the news of a teenage individual being involved in a plot to bomb the tree lighting event in Portland, Oregon,” the statement said. “Such conduct does not in any way represent Islam or Muslims, rather it goes against it.”



Nevertheless, the day after the mosque released the statement unequivocally condemning terrorism, it fell victim to terrorism itself. On Sunday, an apparent arsonist set fire to the mosque, burning 80 percent of the Islamic center’s office before it was put out.


As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said at an event earlier this year sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, “about a third of all foiled al-Qaida-related plots in the U.S. relied on support or information provided by members of the Muslim community.” A recent MPAC report details numerous plots stopped thanks to the help of Muslim Americans, including the recent attempted car bombing of Times Square, which was foiled in part by the help of Senegalese Muslim immigrant Alioune Niass."

SOURCE