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May 20, 2013
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 The Terrorists Newt Gingrich Wouldn’t StopPosted on Mar 11, 2010It took the case of “JihadJane” to illuminate what should have been obvious by now: Anyone who claims to be able to identify a potential terrorist by appearance or nationality is delusional. There’s a reason why all of us have to take our shoes off at the airport. For years, some voices on the right have argued forcefully for racial-ethnic-religious profiling. After the Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner, Newt Gingrich wrote that the time has come “to profile for terrorists and to actively discriminate based on suspicious terrorist information.” Gingrich groused that “because our elites fear politically incorrect honesty, they believe that it is better to harass the innocent, delay the harmless, and risk the lives of every American than to do the obvious, the effective, and the necessary.” I won’t quote any more of Gingrich’s lengthy screed, but any reader would conclude that if the former House speaker were manning an airport metal detector he’d give extra scrutiny to anyone who resembled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the Nigerian accused in the Christmas Day attempt—while essentially giving a pass to someone like Colleen LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, Pa. Which, as it turns out, would have been a dangerous mistake. According to a federal indictment, LaRose was a regular on radical Islamist websites who sometimes called herself JihadJane. She allegedly had expressed a desire to become a martyr for Islam, and prosecutors charge that before her arrest last October she was actively plotting to kill a Swedish artist who had drawn a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog. Advertisement What they don’t have in common is anything else. Abdulmutallab is a young, black, wealthy, foreign man with a Muslim-sounding name. LaRose is a blond, blue-eyed, middle-aged white woman who grew up in Texas, dropped out of high school, married and divorced a couple of times, became the girlfriend of a man from Pennsylvania and ended up living unremarkably in a small town 50 miles from Philadelphia, where neighbors say they often heard her talking to her cats. On the Internet, she allegedly boasted that her appearance and nationality would allow her to travel freely and without scrutiny as she went about her mission—apparently self-assigned—of killing Swedish artist Lars Vilks. There is no indication that she had any actual contact with al-Qaida, which has put a $100,000 bounty on Vilks’ head. According to the indictment, LaRose traveled to Europe to meet with unnamed, like-minded individuals, and also allegedly stole her American boyfriend’s passport with the idea of giving it to a fellow jihadist to use. But it does not appear she had the slightest idea of how to kill anybody. Still, aspiring terrorists can stumble into becoming real ones. And what profile would have picked her out of the crowd? Is the FBI supposed to maintain a list of small-town cat ladies whose every movement has to be tracked and analyzed? LaRose may be unique because of her looks, but she is hardly the only American thought by officials to have been seduced by the ideology of jihad. Omar Hammami, who as a teenager was president of his sophomore class in Daphne, Ala., is a key figure in al-Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group in Somalia that is affiliated with al-Qaida. In December, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan and accused of trying to join al-Qaida. “Washington is still avoiding being intellectually honest about the war we are in,” Gingrich claims. But intellectual honesty requires taking into account the fact that terrorists and would-be terrorists don’t come from central casting. This means that at airports and elsewhere, there has to be equal-opportunity scrutiny. To “actively discriminate,” as Gingrich and others recommend, would do more than single out a lot of innocent people. It would guarantee that we miss the next JihadJane—who might be taking instruction from leaders more nefarious than her cats. Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com. © 2010, Washington Post Writers Group  TAGS:
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By Alan, March 14, 2010 at 7:39 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
We retreated and appeased all over the place during
Report thisClinton and we were attacked 3 times on US soil by OBL.
Of course you can try to petal this line to the family
of Daniel Pearl.
By berniem, March 14, 2010 at 1:52 pm Link to this comment
Are you sure that the picture of that blond woman in the MSM is Jihad Jane? She sure as hell looks like this woman I saw last summer at a Tea Bagger gig. Naw, couldn’t be.
Report thisBy samosamo, March 14, 2010 at 12:01 pm Link to this comment
By cyrena, March 14 at 3:11 am
Good to see you are still around as I have missed you and
Louise’s input and from your comment in the ‘delayed’ post telling all TDers about an overhaul already in process, I agree with your disgust about so much craziness that at times overwhelmingly prevails here and it gives reason to me to go elsewhere to read opinions and punditry of other’s thoughts.
As to this post, I just shake my head at the continued use of
terror(ist)(ism) as from its creation straight out of w’s and
dick’s mouths which was and still is just an imperialist blanket
term to maintain wars in sovereign nations more liking for the
military money industrial congressional complex as that is
what the current american economy is based on and oh, how
convenient it is to tag someone as a terrorist maybe because
they just carry a book of matches in their pocket.
I still say that it is a way of protecting the ‘elite’ from losing
Report thiswhat they have stolen or keeping them safe because of what they support in the destruction of this country and so much around the world, instead of the charade of ‘keeping america safe’ when it is keeping the elite safe.
By cyrena, March 13, 2010 at 11:11 pm Link to this comment
• “According to a federal indictment, LaRose was a regular on radical Islamist websites who sometimes called herself JihadJane. She allegedly had expressed a desire to become a martyr for Islam, and prosecutors charge that before her arrest last October she was actively plotting to kill a Swedish artist who had drawn a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog.”
Yeah right, according to the federal indictment; which never should have been filed in the first place. Now what *I* heard, (according to the youtube video) is that she felt so sorry for the suffering Muslims that she wanted to do something for them. Please!
And there’s no way in hell that she comes anywhere close to being a Jihad ANYTHING. The photo shows a blonde white woman heavy on the highlights. Yeah, that’s real radical Islam. No doubt al-Qaeda welcomed her with open arms. Give us a break. There is nothing in the description of this Wisconsin woman that would lead anyone to conclude that she even had a clue of what Islam is about. Seriously, she just sounds like another nut job, and there are tons of them out there.
Remember the gang that was allegedly going to blow up the Sears Tower, and that was yet another big ol’ attack that Cheney claimed he stopped? There’ve been dozens of these ‘scares’. And with the exception of the Shoebomber, Richard somebody, and this last guy who ALSO started his alleged terror activities on the other side of the Atlantic, I can’t think of any of these events that have ever come to any sort of a trial or prosecution, because they never panned out to be whatever they were claimed to be. i.e., no evidence. And the incident with the Swedish artist who did the depiction is old. Or maybe this is the same guy and he’s done a more recent inflammatory sketch, but I remember a similar incident from a few years back. So if somebody was plotting to take him out, they weren’t very organized about it.
Report thisBy rfidler, March 13, 2010 at 3:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
johnnyfarout:
Yes. Yes you are.
Report thisBy Paolo, March 13, 2010 at 3:33 pm Link to this comment
Well, I agree with some of what Eugene Robinson says here.
As to the question of why we all have to take our shoes off at the airport, the real answer is: BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT STICKS ITS NOSE INTO THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF PRACTICALLY EVERY NATION ON EARTH!
As Osama bin Laden has said, no one attacks the Swiss. Why would they? What would be the point?
Withdraw our meddling troops from the 148 nations in which they are stationed, and the cause of terrorism against the US would vanish. What would be the point?
America should lose her pretensions of being the “leader of the free world.” America should focus on becoming once again a land of freedom and prosperity.
Report thisBy johnnyfarout, March 13, 2010 at 10:30 am Link to this comment
This need to see “leaders” everywhere, as if people can’t be their own heroes, is a problem. This “cat” Robinson is frustrating in his analysis of just about everything. Of course the FBI has a dossier on all the cat ladies out there. Plus he misspells alQueda all the time…it’s spelled CIA. What’s so hard about that? Why even mention that nincompoop Newt? Don’t they even get the irony in her chosen name? Just look how dangerous HanoiJane turned out to be to the Empire. “Stumble into being” real ones, indeed; it’s getting pretty goofball around here anymore, in Pa. A public defender friend says that PA. has a scheme for full employment… “lock half the people up, and have the other half watch them”. Hey, whatever works, right? What I’m thinking is that behind every terrorist that’s “found out”, is a CIA black-ops guy/gal pulling some strings. “Dance my little beauties!” Plus desperate loneliness, alienation, and poverty of ideas and unemployment in the “free and open market place of commerce” surely can’t have anything to do with any of this. Why exactly did they put LSD in the rye bread and drinking water, and spritz NuevoYorke with pathogens? Getting to the actual bottom of 911 would go a long way to having the right solutions… but we certainly don’t want to go there, now that we’re all comfy with all these lies, and all the bucks flowing around by the trillions. How about that heroin from Afkablamastan; … boy that’s sure good for us all each and every one. Oh, and never bring up all the poisonings we’ve done to the planet on our way to being richer than hell… what do you want to do? Start some trouble?
Report thisBy K, March 13, 2010 at 10:15 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
To be fair, the latest terrorists (save the IRS terrorist, a Christian white male) ,
both Caucasian women, are Muslim converts. So continuing with the articles
train of thought we can conclude that indeed religious profiling is accurate?
While I agree with the premise presented, these two of atypical terrorists, do not wholly damn the notion
Report thisof profiling,. That understood, the point of the article is well received, though this
point alone severely weakens its foundation.
By samosamo, March 13, 2010 at 8:44 am Link to this comment
“”“Newt Gingrich wrote that the time has come “to profile for
terrorists and to actively discriminate based on suspicious
terrorist information.” Gingrich groused that “because our
elites fear politically incorrect honesty, they believe that it is
better to harass the innocent, delay the harmless, and risk the
lives of every American than to do the obvious, the effective,
and the necessary.””“
*********************
Gingrich admitting that this ostensible ‘keep america safe’
Report thisendeavor is really to protect the criminal elites and their ill
gotten gains by using devious and harassing tactics because
why else would ‘elites’ fear any kind of honesty much less very
close scrutiny that would uncover their criminal behavior?
By balkas, March 13, 2010 at 8:21 am Link to this comment
Since people in all lands became by now much discriminatory-racist [sister-brother evil act],profiling people is just the offspring of the greatest evil that ever befell us:discrimination, condemnation, belittlemnet of some people and elevation of some peple to an idolic essense.
Neither discrimination-racism nor blamation-defamation can exist w.o. its sister: the miseducation that has been plagueing us over the last[at least] 10 k yrs.
It is no wonder that some people go off the deep end?
Report thisBut if that was the case, it wldn’t be that bad with seven individuals going berserk, but when u have six bn of them, now that is s’mthing to think about!
tnx