I see the Times Square bomber has been captured. Under powers recently asserted by the Obama Administration, we can assassinate him this afternoon, right?
Why the delay? Is Obama soft on terrorism?
Jason Kuznicki
Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.
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We need to exploit him for intelligence advantage first using interrogation techniques that do not repeat DO NOT constitute torture.Report
Do we know why he did it? Maybe it’s because he’s one of those religious nut teabaggers who hates the government. We need to fight against this dangerous ideology tooth and claw and even against the people who enable these terrorists by giving them the aid and comfort of public demonstrations implicitly calling for this violence!
If, however, he is not a teabagger, we need to explain how Islam is not, in fact, the problem and these people are outliers who betray the (really, quite moderate) beliefs of millions and millions and millions of people and tar them with these extremist actions.Report
@Jaybird,
Nice, first blame the TEA Party and then make excuses for the religion of peace. Are you going to tell us next that Americans brought his attack on themselves?Report
@Scott, I don’t know.
Maybe they did.
It depends on why the bomber made the bomb, doesn’t it?Report
@Jaybird,
Sadly you sound like Mayor Bloomberg who was speculating the bomber was mad about Obamacare. I guess it is not politically correct to acknowledge that the bomber is Muslim.Report
@Jaybird, Isn’t this just a bit of false-equivalence between fringe anti-government groups and all of Islam? Is there something inherently wrong with saying that anti-government extremists that preach violence should be condemned, regardless and independently of their religious bent?
If a sizable number of people blamed all of Christianity for George Tiller’s murder, for example, I’d be more sympathetic to your point. But this just seems like preemptive self-victimization.Report
@trizzlor, are the tea baggers fringe anti-government groups?
If they aren’t, isn’t a comparison between them and Islam somewhat apt?Report
I guess it’s subjective, though I’m quite convinced that there are extremist groups within the tea-party movement that should be marginalized. My point though, is that saying “one anti-government protester is violent therefore we should be wary of all anti-government protesters” is quite a ways off from saying “one anti-American Islamist is violent therefore we should be wary of all Muslims”.
Once reprisals against Muslims for terrorism are down to the level of those against Christians for tea-bagging, then we can probably shelve the “religion of peace” signs for the Gadsden flag.Report
@trizzlor, one again, I am reminded of the essays written following the Tiller shooting and the Fort Hood shooting.
The best way to tell if someone was likely to write a “well, you have to understand” essay about the one was whether they were breathing fire about the other.Report
@Jaybird, I don’t think His Magnificence permits usage of the term “terrorist.” I will be required to report any further use of that word…which is a non-word. Thank you.Report
@Bob Cheeks, can I use the prefix “domestic-” if they can somehow be tied to occidental conservative inclinations?Report
Off with his head! Anything less than an execution by 5PM today is un-American. We don’t need to know anything more. The very suggestion is proof that you’re soft on terror.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, if he’s protesting the war with a piece of performance art, wouldn’t government assassination qualify as an infringement of his First Amendment rights?Report
@Jaybird,
As a colleague of mine just said, “his idea of a bomb is like what I’d come up with if you gave me fifty bucks and said I couldn’t use the Internet.”
But still… we can’t afford a pre-9/11 mindset. Off with his head! Because terrorism!Report
@Jason Kuznicki, did you read what Thoreau said on Henley’s site?
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/02/11094
It appears that the terrorists we’re facing at home these days are basically the Generation Veal of terrorists. “Yeah, Osama, I, like, forgot to read the bomb manual. And then I left some supplies at home. Can I, like, get some funding for another attempt? No? That’s, like so unfair. I mean, I tried and everything. Don’t I get credit for that? Not even partial credit?”Report
I did. I didn’t link it here only because I thought the “Generation Veal” reference was a bit obscure.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
5 PM. Are you out of your skull?
1:11 PM and that’s final!!! (It’s 1:10 now) 😉Report
@Dave, Obama said he was eligible for stimulus funding, and the trail would be on ABC.Report
@Bob Cheeks,
Can I get stimulus funding too?Report
What upsets me is the way the media kind of hosed the investigation. Law enforcement was hoping to keep an eye on the guy for a bit to see what they could find out and the media blabbed some stuff so he booked.
I suspect though, due to the crappy nature of the bomb that he might be more of a ‘lone gunman’ than part of an organized terror network.
BTW Megan McArdle had a great post yesterday on the cost-benefit behind terrorism.Report
Apparently this guy had bomb making training in Waziristan. That’s quite some training. You have to wonder if the CIA is running fake Jihadi training camps for these numb-nuts. If they’re not, they should.Report
@Simon K, “Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb and killed hundreds! This is Miracle Gro! It is available at every Home Depot and Lowe’s and K-Mart in America!”Report
@Jaybird,
It was apparently “urea-based” fertilizer. I wonder if it was organic?Report
“Brilliant work, detective. How did you catch him so quickly?”
“We got his name and address off his application for an OSH card.”Report
Is Janet going to go on TV and tell everyone that the system worked though the FBI lost him an he got on the plane?Report