The last mistake

Muslim in prayer in Bali

Atrios posted this:

Bullshit

This just isn't true, and even if it is true it's no justification for bypassing the courts.

SAN ANTONIO -- President Bush on Sunday strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited initiative that tracks only incoming calls to the United States.

"It's seems logical to me that if we know there's a phone number associated with al-Qaida or an al-Qaida affiliate and they're making phone calls, it makes sense to find out why," Bush said. "They attacked us before, they'll attack us again."

-Atrios 4:57 PM

Yeah, too bad they have conversations between children and their grandparents. Bush is shitting himself because he knows innocent people have been caught up in this, people who could, in no possible way, be linked to terrorism.

This is Bush's greatest and last fuckup. He's failed his way through school, through the guard, through life, now he's failing as president.

It's only a matter of time before a court reveals little Jamal was talking to grandma in Lebanon about his field trip to the National Zoo. Not plotting to kill their fellow Americans.

Has anyone seriously thought about why there have been no attacks in the US after 9/11?

Let's toss this in the air: no Americans have been convicted of actual terrorism in the US. There have been no serious AQ cells found outside Fox's 24, and no further attacks?

Why?

Because there is no pool of dissaffected Muslims in the US. You would have to be damn near crazy to believe in Osama's claims of oppression for Muslims in the US. Even with the FBI, there is the lack of daily fear dissidents face in our ally Egypt.

What our wingnut friends forget is that the terrorism attacks on US soil have been committed by immigrants and visitors, not long term residents of the US. This doesn't mean that there isn't some cell out there, but AQ isn't Kaos, they don't have the resources of the FIS to keep agents in the field forever.

Most of the people who came to the US fled the oppression of their former countries, importing it isn't an issue for them.

Look at the people actually arrested in the terrorism trials, recent immigrants and black muslims, your likely pools of disaffected people. Would an agency with any skill rely on people like Adam Gahan, Richard Reid and Jose Padilla for operations? Their collective IQ is about the weight of a 12 year old.

The people one would actually worry about in Europe, the educated, ambitious Muslim male is far more likely to be serving in Iraq or Afghanistan as a US soldier, than plotting revenge on America.

Take that kid who recently went to Iraq. He was so secure in his Americanism, he thought he could walk around Iraq for a school report and come back home like any other field trip. He wasn't going to be a jihadi or discover the resistance. He wanted to tell a pro-US story.

Why is this? Because in the US, a muslim can be a fully integrated American, keep his culture and language and work without restriction. Since there is no one way of being American, the average Muslim immigrant can choose how to integrate in to the wider society.

This doesn't mean that there won't be an attack, but if you look at the Madrid and London attacks, done by disaffected locals and recent immigrants, you look around the US and don't see those pools of people. Some might exist, but for the most part, immigrants have way, way too much to lose if one of their kin becomes a terrorist. They have every incentive to turn them in as people in London and Madrid had to turn the other way.

Why? Because Muslims stick out in Europe in a way they don't in the US. Europeans have monocultures where the different have to fit in. Americans don't.

Which is why Bush's illegal spying and monitoring have hit such a dry hole. The people they're checking are pretty unlikely to want to blow things up when they can make money and have a safe future.

posted by Steve @ 8:11:00 PM