by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Although information is still too sketchy to draw any comprehensive conclusions (other than that the Boston killings are not, as recently suggested, fall out from sequestration, the NRA, lack of gun control, climate change, right-wing tea-party zealots, etc.), there emerges a familiar profile to the suspects that we have seen before.\u00a0In\u00a0articles\u00a0in 2002<\/a>\u00a0and 2007<\/a>, I touched on the dangers of isolated Islamic-driven terrorists\u00a0without direct connections to organized terrorist networks, calling it a sort of \u201cal-Qaedism.\u201d<\/p>\n In other word, single and usually young American resident males, often originating from the Muslim world (and not always from the Arab Middle East), sometimes citizens, sometimes resident aliens, can at some point not square the circle of being attracted to American popular culture, often failing to assimilate or succeed in the United States, and ostensibly seeking to remain (or return to being) a devout Muslim that alone gives them moral redemption and guidance.<\/p>\n The result is a dead soul who kills the vulnerable and innocent, and who is a psychological and social mess: consumed by fury\u00a0at the country that embraced him in extremis, coupled with romance toward the country he or his family fled (and no longer has to endure),\u00a0and a reliance upon, and yet lack of respect for, the tolerant liberal culture that allows him a freedom of action impossible in the land of his birth.<\/p>\n Like some, I question the standard American\u00a0conceit that ignorance of the U.S. explains anti-American behavior in the Islamic world. It often seems just as likely the very opposite case: The more Islamists are exposed to our affluence, popular culture, informality, self-critique, lack of hierarchy, sexual liberality, tolerance of homosexuality, parity between the sexes, and tolerance of all religious observance, and see that such American values may contribute to the world\u2019s attraction to the United States,\u00a0the more they end up hating it, not the least because of fears that America\u2019s nature\u00a0erodes one\u2019s own zealotry.<\/p>\n We are told that both these isolated attacks and failed plots (well over 40 since 9\/11) do not pose a direct threat to the U.S. Perhaps. But \u201cthreat\u201d\u00a0is a relative concept: Destroying the idea of this year\u2019s Boston Marathon and shutting down an entire American city, attacking a pedestrian zone at the University of North Carolina, murdering at a Jewish center in Seattle, or targeting military recruiting stations can add up,\u00a0and alter the behavior of millions.<\/p>\n What to do with these misfits like Tamerlan Tsarnaev or Major Hasan and home-born killers such as\u00a0the late John Allen Muhammed (who idolized bin Laden), other than to pay attention to footprints on social networks and patterns of behavior that suggest a radical-Islam-generated propensity for extremism, instead of avoiding\u00a0such scrutiny in fear of illiberal intolerance?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think the therapeutic and euphemistic approach (the effort to change the language to win adherents by fantasies such as \u201cworkplace violence\u201d\/\u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d\/ \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d) works.\u00a0Avoidance of the word terrorism, especially in the context of Islam, or worry over the loss of the diversity in the military after the Hasan killing, is not the right way to drive home to would-be killers the image of a society collectively vigilant and unforgiving of terrorism.<\/p>\n These Orwellian terms came from the easy caricaturing of the Bush-Cheney-era anti-terrorism protocols, an indulgence that became popular as Iraq heated up, 9\/11 fears lessened, and politics returned with a vengeance. But those measures were in response to real threats about which we were initially both confused and unprepared,\u00a0and soon had forgotten. The irony of the Patriot\u00a0Act measures was that they largely worked and therefore gave some the luxury to insist that the measures were unnecessary all along.<\/p>\n If we are intent on accepting persecuted \u201crefugees\u201d\u00a0from religious-based conflict in the Islamic world \u2014 whether Chechens to Boston or Somalis to Minnesota \u2014 then it is probably not a wise idea to grant, without close scrutiny,\u00a0those without citizenship periodic visas to return to their supposedly dangerous countries of origin. If their homeland was so perilous to begin with, why would a resident alien risk going back to a place whose danger was the primary\u00a0reason for his original request for asylum in the U.S.? Assembling anti-personnel IEDs is not the sort\u00a0of skill\u00a0that one acquires without first-hand mentoring \u2014 it cannot not simply be learned by downloading plans from the Internet, at least not without a lot of personal risk.<\/p>\n Finally, why is it so easy to enter the United States and so hard to be deported from it, especially after being arrested or violating its laws?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Although information is still too sketchy to draw any comprehensive conclusions (other than that the Boston killings are not, as recently suggested, fall out from sequestration, the NRA, lack of gun control, climate change, right-wing tea-party zealots, etc.), there emerges a familiar profile to the suspects that we have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[59,285],"tags":[161,233,852,35,1031,1017,30,1024,205,162,855],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1x4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9396,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dream-of-muslim-outreach-has-become-a-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":5894,"position":0},"title":"The Dream of Muslim Outreach Has Become a Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Affirming Muslim grievances has only increased the Arab world\u2019s sense that Obama is weak. \u00a0 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5911,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-borg\/","url_meta":{"origin":5894,"position":1},"title":"The Obama Borg","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"How \"man-caused disasters\" replaced Islamist terrorism in the Obama lexicon. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0lore, the Borg\u00a0was a collective of servile drone operatives that sought to assimilate other species into\u00a0its \u201chive mind.\u201d Something akin to that creepy groupthink arose when the Obama administration took power and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5867,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-paradoxes-of-the-boston-bombings\/","url_meta":{"origin":5894,"position":2},"title":"The Paradoxes of the Boston Bombings","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Al-Qaedism A certain American (or for that matter Westernized) resident or citizen \u2014 usually male, almost always young, born a Muslim, prone to guilt over temporary secularization or Westernization, as often (or more so) from Pakistan, a Russian Islamic province, the Balkans, Iran, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9342,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/isis-and-domestic-terrorism\/","url_meta":{"origin":5894,"position":3},"title":"ISIS and \u2018Domestic\u2019 Terrorism","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In reacting to terrorism, Obama cannot bring himself to say the words \u2018radical Islam.\u2019 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online There are many threads to the horror in Orlando. 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Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4098,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/political-vultures\/","url_meta":{"origin":5894,"position":5},"title":"Political Vultures","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The sick are of turning insanity into politics by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Very few Americans are fans of both\u00a0The Communist Manifesto\u00a0and\u00a0Mein Kampf, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. 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