The Big One

As far as I can tell, this latest terrorism bust was the real thing, and the perpetrators had the means to carry it out. This is a change from the other mostly fabricated busts we've had to endure this year. The Dept. of Homeland Security is patting itself on the back, and I'm sure the White House is full of old guys high-fiving each other. Oh, wait, Bush is on vacation in Crawford, so that's where the high-fives are. But before you all go voting republican this fall because they stopped a big terrorist attack, you should remember that all of the credit should go to British authorities. Brits figured out what was happening, and the Brits put a stop to it. Just reminding everybody.

I won't go into very much detail about the actual plot and stuff, because news this big has a habit of being beaten to death by any and all media. It contained the usual creativity necessary in plots with any chance of succeeding, although it does seem to be inspired by a 15 year old Al Qaida plan, and, surprise, the would be bombers were Muslims. Since you know all of that, I'm going to look at the bigger picture.

I read a book a little less than a month ago now, The Arabs, by David Lamb. It is about 20 years old now, and you should keep that in mind when reading it, but it's a great insight on Arab culture and the role the Islamic religion plays in every day life. I'd encourage everybody to read it. With the basic ideas from this book, and a fairly quick analysis of current events, one can piece together the root of our problem with terrorists.

Our problem is not a religion the promotes war. Islam encourages peace and tolerance just as much as Christianity or Judaism. It's the extremists who seem to have found some sympathy in recent years that commit these acts of terror. Other religions have these extremists, too. We've stepped on one too many feet though, and more and more people are fed up enough with us to lend a sympathetic ear to religious terrorist groups. A few simple things (for instance, not backing Israel without question) would take away a lot of moderate supporters that terrorists enjoy.

Another thing I find disturbing is that these people just arrested in the U.K. were all born and raised in the U.K. This is just the latest in a string of events in Europe that seem to point to widespread ethnic unrest within the Arab immigrant community. There were riots in France (not the labor riots, but the ones before that which were more racial in nature), the July 7 attacks in London last year, and now this, are just the most high profile events I can think of off the top of my head. All of these attacks involved Muslims who lived in western countries. Maybe it's just because we don't have as many muslim immigrants as Europe, but the U.S. doesn't have those kinds of problems. I haven't heard one case of Muslims or arabs in born and raised in America plotting to commit an act of terrorism against us.

What needs to be done in Europe is to integrate Muslims into society, not just let them do their own thing in their own part of the city while you pretend they don't exist. Integration would inevitably bring about representation in the government, which would help when dealing with muslim governments, since you've got your own Muslims helping you make policy decisions. When they feel like it's their country too, not just the native British or French's, immigrants won't be so quick to jump on the anti-western bandwagon (but they could still very easily do so if policy changes aren't made so that we don't seem to completely disregard arabs and Muslims).

There you have it. Ignorance breeds mistrust, and pretty soon you're killing Iraqi civilians and smuggling liquid explosives onto planes. Make an effort to understand other people and where they're coming from, and a lot of problems will take care of themselves.