People's Champ Paul Waldman, Michael Scherer, and Spencer Ackerman have already weighed in on this, but ... from the "suicide note" of pilot Andrew Joseph Stack III, who authorities say crashed his plane into an Austin, Texas, IRS building yesterday:
I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.
Osama Bin Laden's "letter to America," 2002:
We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.
Definition of "domestic terrorism" in U.S. law:
[T]he term "domestic terrorism" means activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; 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.
Wall Street Journal's conclusion:
In the aftermath of the Ft. Hood shootings, news organizations jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the shootings were an issue of PTSD. Conservatives mocked them for being "politically correct." Now that the perpetrator happens to be a white guy, news organizations have been equally apprehensive about labeling the incident "terrorism," although it's now clear that's what it was. You don't crash a plane into a building these days if you're trying to avoid political symbolism.
I'm actually fine with not jumping to terrorism as the immediate explanation for any suspicious incident. I think that's the right thing to do. I just want to point out that the forces of "political correctness" that prevented news organizations from jumping to the immediate conclusion that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was getting orders from al-Qaeda central -- and as far as we know, he wasn't -- seem to be even more at work when the perpetrator is a white guy.
Meanwhile, Sen. Scott Brown, proud advocate of torture when it comes to Muslims suspected of terrorism, responded to the attack on the IRS building by saying, "No one likes paying taxes obviously."
Imagine if a Muslim leader had responded to Hasan's rampage saying, "Well obviously, no one wants to be deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan."
-- A. Serwer
