OMG, the White Male Conservative Terrorists Are Back!
and
"Is China Pulling the Strings in North Korea?"
 

I disagree.   People filled with murderous hatred and intolerance have been here all along and should be punished,  but it's also reprehensible to drag politics into the tragic murders of a security guard and an abortion doctor and an American military man.

I would never defend the actions of these crazed killers...but --

-- These bloggers are engaged in illogical, cruel and opportunistic ravings.

One female blogger hysterically describes James von Brunn as "puffed up with white male privilege" when he entered Washington's Holocaust Museum and killed a guard.  That tells us more about the blogger's attitudes toward men than it does about anything that may have been going on in von Brunn's sick mind.

You'll know real terrorism when you see it.  You don't need to be told that incidental  crazy acts by individuals are the same as suicide bombers who make you feel as though you can't leave your home.

At least one very recent blogger has the sense to ask the question: This is terrorism, is it not?

Well, the Dictionary.com definition of terrorism is: The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.  Or: The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. Or: A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.  You can of course discard the latter definition in these killings.

The "terrorism" of a von Brunn or Scott Roeder (who allegedly shot and killed Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller) is, what, an attempt to intimidate for political purposes?  Who is intimidated?  Abortion doctors? Folks who want to protect the right of doctors to perform "late-term abortions?"  Are you personally now feeling submissive because of Roeder's or von Brunn's acts? Does any of this really threaten your daily life?

You wanna know terrorism?  You ever heard of The Holocaust?  Millions of Jews died, but many stood up during and after WWII to fight for a new way of life.

So, what, people interested in The Holocaust or maybe all museum-goers are now fearing for their lives because of these nuts?  You think Jewish people in general are cowed by this one anti-Semite when there are whole nations bent on anti-Semitism?

What state of fear was produced by these two recent nutty killings?  Are you personally threatened by Roeder or von Brunn, or is it just that their hate and their actions offend you?  If you're offended, it's not really terrorism.  It's murder that offends you, just as any murder offends all of us. It's not classic terrorism, despite what people may tell you.

Terrorism is what the people of Baghdad face and have faced for decades.  Terrorism is what the people of Israel face every day.  Terrorism is what is being experienced today in Pakistan, Iran, China, North Korea and elsewhere.

Attempts to re-define terrorism in such a trivial way, saying any lone nut who goes to a public place to kill is a terrorist, is doing a disservice to those brave people around the world who face the possibility of a car bomb or a "suicide bomber" each day.

In America today, telling someone you might smack 'em across the face, just implying that it may result in death is defined in police parlance as a "terroristic threat."  That makes it sound ominous and scary, even though it's just words.  But just 20 years ago it was called simply "assault."  An assault is a misdemeanor.  A terroristic threat is a felony.

Von Brunn and Roeder appear to be two nutcases.  Yet the facts will not really be known until they're brought to court.

Von Braunn is not a "typical right-winger."  Catholic Exchange characterizes him as "a Socialist who hated Christianity, Conservatives and Jews."

Not exactly the "fundamentalist Christian" so many politically-bent bloggers imagined von Brunn to be when the news first came out.  

But then anyone in the real world will be skeptical of first reports about any incident.

Right winger, left-winger, Socialist or neo-Nazi (the term "white supremacist" invariably appears before von Brunn's name), these two killers appear to be "lone wolves."  We never want to see the likes of them again.

Nor do we want to see more of the likes of Abdulhakim Muhammad, the man accused of  killing a soldier outside an Arkansas recruiting center in the past few weeks. 

He is religious and he's a male, but that doesn't mean he's a terrorist. News reports don't refer to him as a "terrorist."  If he's convicted of the crime, he's a killer, just as other lone wolf-types can be killers.

But the continent of Africa has been ruled by real terrorists for many decades.  Lone wolf killers are not -- by definition -- terrorists, when compared with the dictators of Africa.

People who want to bring about national or international political change by violence are terrorists.  So are people who want to keep citizens under their thumbs.

The people who commit the acts, though, are not the ones who define terrorism.  The rest of us do.  You and I define it.

If some guy kills an abortion doctor or a soldier, he may want to make us scared. 

But if we're not scared, it's not terrorism in the real sense.

Many of us in this country were scared after the 9/11 attacks.  The vast majority of us were not affected, but we were scared. 

That was real terrorism. It affected political change by scaring lots of people. 

The point of terrorism is to make you feel so uncomfortable that you change your way of life. Even in small ways.

You may remember that Janet Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security Director, came under fire earlier this year for politically profiling possible "right-wing terror," including veterans and so-called "patriots." (And "eco-terrorists," too.)

This, coupled with the White House now refusing to use the term "war on terror," may have something to do with why you haven't heard nearly as much about the Abdulhakim case as you have about the other two.

The Bush administration defined terrorism from without -- the new administration defines terrorism from within.  It's a dispatch for political objectives.

These days everything is politically motivated. It would be in your own self-interest to understand that.

That stuff your boss is doing is probably politically-motivated.  Either you're on the inside or you're on the outside. The days of benevolent, fair employers are on the wane in the days of outrageous corporate "overhead."

But then that's about you.  We'll take that up in a later column. We're talking National Politics here.  Big-time stuff.  It's about all of us in America, not just you or me.

It may turn out that Roeder has ties to other potentially violent anti-abortionists, just as it may turn out that Abdulhakim has ties to known violent terrorists.  Both possibilities have been implied in legitimate news stories, but the investigations continue.  And the FBI has been investigating whether Abdulhakim had planned some kind of attack on a Jewish center in Atlanta and other locations.

In fact, if Abdulhakim has actually been part of a group that planned action to bring political change through the use of terrorist tactics, his could be a case of true homegrown terrorism. He's not included by recent bloggers because it's hard to characterize him as a right-winger.

Unless his recent conversion to Islam makes him a "fundamentalist Islamist," which may mean he's against the rights of women, among other things. Was Abdulhakim a "black supremacist" or an "Islamic supremacist?"  We don't know, so far.

(AP: "In documents released Tuesday, authorities said they recovered Molotov cocktails, three guns and ammunition from Abdulhakim Muhammad’s pickup after the attack Monday in a suburban Little Rock shopping center that left Pvt. William Long dead and Pvt. Quinton I. Ezeagwula wounded.")

Those who inject race into these killings are doing nothing but harm: Much has been made of the fact that von Brunn is white and the murdered security guard was black.  Then you can't leave out the fact that Abdulhakim is black and the victim, Pvt. William Andrew Long, 23, of Conway, Ark., was white.  So that means both murders were race-related hate crimes? C'mon.

Let's respect the families of the three victims and mourn the dead, not politicize the possible killers. 

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber has killed eight people in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber killed an anti-Taliban cleric in Afghanistan.  In Pakistan, extremists may be buying children to use as bombers.  And believers in freedom from religious oppression are rioting in Iran. All this in the past three weeks.

In our expansive safe haven of the United States, we're like little busybodies, trying to equate nutty murders with worldwide terrorism.  It's almost laughable, if you live in Jerusalem. Or most cities in Pakistan.  Or anywhere in Afghanistan.  Or Baghdad, you get my point? The problem is: in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Myanmar you have to take these matters seriously.  Very seriously, y'know? You don't in the cushy comfort of America.

America. Perhaps the last "cushy" place left in the world, unless you're among the elite in Moscow.

I will not defend right-wingers. And I will most certainly will not defend left-wingers; they were the violent nuts of the 1960s and '70s. They staged real terrorist acts. The left-wing bombings of the Bank of America and staged riots elsewhere in those times were real acts of terrorism, because people were afraid to go to their banks or to their churches or to college campuses.  And the reactionary police and military made us feel less safe by, on orders from politicians, bullying and shooting civilians.

This is a new time.

And not in the old-fashioned, worn-out 1960s sense. The old keepers of political correctness are fading into a new world. Most of them would like us to believe that a lone-nut killer is the same kind of terrorist as the suicide bomber in a Baghdad marketplace.  Well, yeah. As long as it's not in my neighborhood, by golly!

Either we talk about things, or we die. 

All of us.

Liberal/Conservative/Democrat/Republican.

In whatever little corner of the world that makes you feel comfortable, you slap a label on yourself.  But your comfort zone is now being threatened. 

Riots in Iran. North Korea on the brink. Russia, China, India on the rise. America looking like it's going bankrupt.

We have to talk.

Then based on our talks and our intellect, we will act accordingly, with goodwill to all.

Note to bloggers who are so quick to judge events based on their own political prejudices and their absolute beliefs in what they see and hear among first reports from the news media -- it's time to put this in perspective. 

The world is quickly passing you by.  The time when you could pick and choose among so-called terrorists is almost finished. Forget the guy who killed the soldier, concentrate on the so-called "right wingers."  Those days are almost over.

If you really want to denigrate the memory of a doctor and a security guard and a courageous military man, feel free to continue injecting callow and hysterical political rhetoric into tragic stories of violence, black or white, Christian, anti-Christian or Muslim.

You are hurting lots of people with your nonsense. Non-sense.  Definition: Lack of sense.

But speaking as an Independent:  Please spare those of us who are trying to find a political middle ground your illogical, cruel and opportunistic ravings.

6/24/09 updated

Odd But Related article: "Conservatives Are Largest Ideological Group In the United States"

-------------------------

With talk now surfacing on the net that some kind of attack by the US against North Korea (economic or military?) may be imminent, does anybody really know why NK exploded that nuke recently?

That's the spark of a good discussion today at Slate, and the points are well taken: It's a test of President Obama, or " North Korea is a puppet state, and the Chinese are the puppeteers. They could end this farce tomorrow. If they haven't done so yet, there must be a reason."

Or maybe Kim Jong-Il is just crazy.  But this does bring up the most confounding thing about NK supposedly setting off a nuclear bomb and  trucking ominous missiles to launching pads.  Why now?

The Christian Science Monitor doubts that there'll be any US military response to Kim's recent actions.  And indeed, any kind of attack on NK would be very dangerous.  There are reports that Kim has laid in a good supply of biological weapons such as anthrax that could be used against South Koreans (and our many, many thousands of US troops there) should things get desperate.

Until some answers are provided, the whole uptick in hostilities by North Korea is confounding.  Not only Why Now? -- but What's Next?  Does NK intend on setting off those missiles they're supposedly bringing to launch?  "Those missiles" are said to be capable of reaching Alaska!  Though it's not at all certain they could deliver a nuclear warhead that far -- or at all.

It's all distressing, and the Slate argument is that China is the only real benefactor that North Korea has.  China condemned the North Korean nuclear test last week, but hasn't done anything about it.  China will in fact be suspect until it does do something, but then the entire international community is suspect now -- at least those who condemned Kim's actions but have done nothing about it.  The United Nations is one example.

The UN debated the atomic test in so-called emergency session, but has yet to do anything at all except talk, as usual.

Maybe China will do something about North Korea as soon as anybody else does something.  Which may be never. 

Or at least not until North Korea is able to deliver a warhead.

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