Michael Mukasey, George W. Bush's last attorney general, puts party ahead of country in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today entitled "Make No Mistake, It Was Jihad" (working title, presumably: "Don't You Dare Give This Guy His Miranda Rights or Try Him in Civilian Court, You America-Hating Hippie"). I won't go into a point-by-point rebuttal, but let me just pull out a minor detail:
There is also cause for concern in that this was obviously a suicide operation -- not in the direct way of a bomber who kills all his victims and himself at the same time by blowing himself up, but in the way of someone who conducts a spree, holding the stage for as long as possible, before he is cut down in a blaze of what he believes is glory. Here, think Mumbai.How eager was Dzhokar Tsarnaev to be killed by the cops in a blaze of jihad glory? Apparently, this eager:
New details on the brothers' fight with police suggests Tamerlan was killed when his brother ran him over, dragging Tamerlan underneath his car in his bid to escape.Instead, we're reading about a possible self-inflicted gunshot wound made while he was in hiding, and unsuccessfully.
And, um, do we now have to think of every crime that ends in suicide by cop as (melodramatic minor chord) "a suicide operation"? A 2009 study says that a third of police shootings in North America are examples of "suicide by cop" Should every one of them make us "think Mumbai"?
I don't know whether, if I was constantly this fraidy-scared, I'd want everyone seeing me soil my Depends in public every day of the week, like a lot of these Bushista's and their fans.
ReplyDeleteGet a grip and "man-up" Tinkerbell!
"this was obviously a suicide operation -- not in the direct way of a bomber who kills all his victims and himself at the same time by blowing himself up, but in the way of someone who conducts a spree, holding the stage for as long as possible, before he is cut down in a blaze of what he believes is glory. Here, think Mumbai."
ReplyDeleteNo, think Columbine. Think Virginia Tech. Think Aurora. Think Sikh Temple. Think Newtown.
Remember that these guys renamed suicide bombers "homicide bombers" because they were so afraid of the magic power of words. In addition to the, as it were, facts--suicide by cop (which you could argue Tamerlan committed--is quite a feature of angry US citizen normal violence. You pretty much can't open a US newspaper, local section, without reading a description of a host of murder/suicides and suicide by cop. You really, really, really, don't need a religious justification for it and, in fact, its quite uncommon and unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteMukasey always struck me as not only someone who was evil, but someone who was profoundly stupid and ineducable in terms of society and history.
aimai,
ReplyDeleteNo, I never thought he was evil, either.
But profoundly stupid and ineducable people tend to be more easily drawn to people who genuinely are evil.