A Look at Domestic Terrorism

Recently on Good Morning America, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani made the statement that, "We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama." One finds it difficult not to stagger under such a dizzying intellect. Take a moment to analyze this statement.

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush." We can start with this part. First, it is grammatically incorrect. The verb have (of which had is the past singular first person conjugation) denotes possession. The addition of the word no negates this and therefore the phrase as a whole is without meaning. It is nonsense to say that you have something that you do not have. The sentence should read, "There weren't any domestic attacks under Bush" but no one ever gets this correct, so we can forgive Rudy this slight transgression.

Second, and more importantly, September 11 was a domestic terrorism attack that happened under Bush. As Mayor of New York City on the day of the attack, you would think Rudy would realize this, but apparently his memory is failing. Next, he stated that we had one attack under Obama. What attack was that? If he is referring to the so-called Underwear Bomber (Christmas day 2009), then one must remind him of the so-called Shoe Bomber (December 22, 2001), which would be the same type of incident. If that's the case, then he would be incorrect because neither of these can truly be called attacks. Both were attempts and both failed.

Apparently Rudy was speaking of the November 5, 2009 attack on Fort Hood, Texas. This attack was perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan, who was soon to be sent to Afghanistan and retaliated by opening fire on the military base where he was employed. Rudy is right that this happened under OBama, but is it domestic terrorism?

According to the Department of Justice, domestic terrorism is "the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." This was an act performed by an individual and therefore is not domestic terrorism under this definition.

The U.S. Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as "activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States." By this definition the Fort Hood attack is not domestic terrorism as none of these objectives were attempted by this attack.

Rudy Giuliani seems to be confused as to what constitutes domestic terrorism. One must wonder why shows like Good Morning America would continue to ask for his opinion.

-- Ann Coulter's November 22, 2006 Article

Ann Coulter is at it again. In her November 22 article she starts off with,

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

Notice she doesn't say anything about terrorists, only about Muslims. She uses the terms interchangeably, as if all Muslims are terrorists, and all terrorists are Muslims. Apparently, the Timothy McVeigh incident escaped Ann's attention. Hint, Ann, he was neither Muslim nor Arab.

Whether or not the Imams should have been removed from the flight I can't say as I wasn't there and I don't know exactly what they did. Some of the actions described certainly sound a bit odd, but I haven't seen anything that made them look threatening. Not according to Ann, however:

Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" — coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died. Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments. After boarding, the imams did not sit together and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage.

Also they were Muslims.

So, they were praying, which makes them suspect. Would they have been suspect if they had been praying the Our Father? Probably not, but because they were praying a Muslim prayer, they must be terrorists. They were denouncing the war in Iraq. I guess that makes me a terrorist as well, because I've been denouncing the war since before we attacked an innocent country. And oh yes, as Ann points out, they were Muslim.

When will we stop allowing hate speech in this country? There are millions of Muslims in the world who do not support the actions of the terrorists on 9/11, yet people like Ann Coulter would have us believe that all Muslims are hate-filled people whose only goal is the eradication of the United States. This is simply not true.

I would like to know how many mosques Ann has visited since 9/11. How many times have you gone to the Muslims who live in this country and talked to them? How many have you interviewed? How many have you sat and broken bread with? And lest Ann feel that I'm giving her instructions that I wouldn't do myself, I'd like to point out that I've done all of these things. I know a good number of Muslims who are beautiful, loving AMERICANS. They don't want to see people die any more than I do, but they do see that there are problems in this nation and that someone needs to work to change them.

Something Ann might notice if she'd get the hate out of her eyes.