Either we are much, much safer than we might have hoped (because the would-be terrorists that just got arrested seem to be some of the most inept creatures on god's green earth), or we have an anti-terror constabulary focused on giving themselves big, neatly wrapped presents with bows and ribbons and bells even as real terrorists smirk and keep silent and continue to plot.
I am not qualified to know which is closer to the truth.
But I do know there is something of a "you've-got-to-be-kidding" air about the latest terror-ring bust. This is the one where a handfull of career petty thieves (one of them has been called by his older sister "the stupidest man in the world") were hanging around a Catholic drop-in center in a downtrodden Hudson Valley town, then apparently knocking back 40 ounce jars of malt liquor on their broken-down porch and talking about hating Jews and finally "located" at a local mosque by a shady police informant who plied them with money and radical jihad yammer until they believed they were actually going to shoot down planes with rockets and bomb the hell out of Riverdale.
Can anyone rationally believe this is a meaningful moment in the fight against terror? Or is it a case of police collaboration in the creation of a "plot" that never would have amounted to more than a few slugs of rotgut and a long nap had there not been ready cash, promises of grandeur, fake weapons procurement, free transportation, and logistical planning all courtesy of our collective anti-terror tax-dollar?
Not that the clowns who got hauled away having planted what they thought were deadly bombs outside synagogues deserve any quarter of sympathy--let them rot wherever they are tossed. But this was not, by any stretch of the imagination what one police official called "a textbook anti-terror operation". No, this was more like the fireman who went into the woods with matches and then rushed back to the firehouse yelling fire--soon to be crowned hero having doused the flames he sparked.
As I was saying--either all the would-be terrorists are idiotic to a degree that beggars belief, or the anti-terrorists are just not noticing what the smart ones are really up to.
--Renaissance
Sunday, May 24, 2009
