Fighting Them Over There So . . .
If official British statements are accurate, the Brits have foiled a major airborne terrorist plot. The first thing to say is, Thank God. The easy thing to say is, “Someone just punched another hole in Flypaper Theory.” The slightly more interesting question is why Britain, which is fighting them over there, came very close to being victimized twice by major terrorist attacks in the last couple of years while America has, always provisionally, remained largely untouched. Both countries have substantial populations of Arab and Muslim immigrants; both countries have domestic-security establishments willing to cut corners; both countries are either stomping all over the Ummah with troops or coddling our enemies as you prefer; the US still has and will always have major holes in its border security. Both countries have those crazy Imams you’re always reading about. But as of this morning, we’re still serenely unbombed, though, via Joyner, I learn there are reports of arrests in Ohio and Egyptian students on the loose.
My tentative conclusion is that we’re simply dealing with a kind of law of small numbers here. The population of Muslims motivated to attack Americans in America is small, though current events are pushing the number up rather than down. Megaterror plots take time to mature. Most probably go wrong before execution (e.g. the Millenium Bomb plot in 2000). But could there be other factors?
Comment by Thoreau —
August 10, 2006 @ 7:58 am
The preliminary reports say that the guys in England were born and raised there. I believe that the train bombers were also born and raised there.
I’d say that America is simply better at assimilating immigrants. I mean, look how miserably England failed to assimilate our ancestors? OK, that was a cheap shot. Still, we are the world’s melting pot, and our pop culture is the most infectious thing on the planet (and I mean that as a compliment).
In a day or two I’m going to post my own thoughts on terrorist recruitment.
Comment by Mona —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:25 am
Thoreau, exactly right — everything I’ve read says the conspirators were British citizens. And they were planning, we are told, to bomb some 9 flights between the UK and the U.S.
I’m with the “right” on the serious matter of crazy Muslims growing in Western countries. Just because demonizing all Muslims would be wrong does not mean we should ignore that it is not, oh, Scandinavian Lutherans who are blowing up airplanes or plotting to.
Comment by Hesiod —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:31 am
Well…it maye be that the stragglershere and there who shoot up Jewish Community Cenetsr in the US will at some point start plotting bigger and more eplosive attacks.
Comment by Jon H —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:33 am
I find it interesting that, supposedly, they were only targeting US airlines, which leaves out rather a lot of flights between Europe and US.
Comment by Jon H —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:33 am
I find it interesting that, supposedly, they were only targeting US airlines, which leaves out rather a lot of flights between Europe and US.
Comment by sean —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:38 am
Despite the propaganda put out by Muslim organizations, the number of Muslims in the United States is actually quite small, possibly under a million. (The number of Arabs is much larger, but Arab Christians aren’t much for terrorism.) I can’t point you to a scholarly article that focuses on this issue, but if you read through a few years of back issues of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the sources cited therein, e.g., the General Social Survey, the National Congregations Study, etc., you will see that no knowledgeable academic believes the kind of numbers (e.g., 7 million Muslims) promulgated by the American Muslim Council and similar organizations. So there may simply not be enough of an indigenous Muslim population to supply very many recruits for terrorist activity.
Comment by Mo —
August 10, 2006 @ 9:15 am
I also think that we don’t have nearly as many extremist imams here. Not to mention, our Muslims aren’t an underclass. Muslims tend to be above the median as far as earnings go, especially when you take time of immigration into account. People that are better off tend to be less willing to mess up a good thing.
sean, I think this is the story that you’re talking about. It’s a pretty hefty range. What’s interesting is that it says the membership numbers are all pretty questionable for methodology reasons. Obviously more centralized religions, like Catholics will have more accurate counts, though.
Comment by Grant —
August 10, 2006 @ 9:22 am
The other thing to note here is that the attacks basically succeded — the disruption to travel is going to be huge.
The Brits are banning all personal items except travel documents and prescription meds from international flights. I am not looking forward to my trans-atlantic flight with no laptop or book, and I’m sure other people with less firm plans are cancelling. Airport shops will be out of business in a week, and that’s a very large fraction of the revenue that keeps airports running.
This is in many ways the future of terrorism here — a plot that works almost as well if discovered as it does if it actually blows things up. It uses our security apparatus as its primary weapon, with the actual bomb a mere detail.
Comment by wade —
August 10, 2006 @ 9:44 am
we’ve got better terrorists than you…
Comment by Carlos —
August 10, 2006 @ 9:54 am
Well, I don’t really have the numbers for Muslim populations in both countries, but my impressión is that the Muslim population in Britain is much larger and certainly they are close to several countries with large Muslim populations too.
Comment by thoreau —
August 10, 2006 @ 9:55 am
Grant-
Remember in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” when Arthur Dent persuades the guy to lie down in front of the bulldozer so that he doesn’t have to? (Or maybe Ford Prefect does the persuading on Arthur Dent’s behalf, I forget.)
I can see something like that: “Look, if we do something you obviously have to respond. But you still have to respond if we try and fail. So trying and failing would be an obvious waste of time on our part, but it would make no difference to you. So what if you guys just respond anyway? Then you do what you would do regardless, but we save a lot of time and effort.”
OK, it probably won’t happen that way, but it would be funny.
Comment by sean —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:43 am
mo, that’s interesting, I hadn’t seen that article. I would be even happier with a peer-reviewed article in an academic journal, but, as I say, I’m not aware of such.
I wonder where that mosque with 50,000 members is?
Comment by Jackmormon —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:46 am
Could it also be that the demographics are different? I recall having read that the Arab-American population voted largely for Republicans until 2001. The older generation of Iranian-Americans I know identified Republican, in the old sense–but then they were 1979 refugees and had fond memories of Nixon’s policy towards the Shah. I think there were also a couple of waves of Lebanese immigration, often Christian, and like much of the Lebanese diaspora, involved in trade. These groups already sound much more likely to assimilate than the post-colonial immigrants more likely to end up in Britain and Europe.
If I’m right about the demographics (a big if, given my utter lack of statistical analysis or research), another question: why do there seem to be more British Islamic terrorists these days than French?
Comment by Anderson —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:51 am
Didn’t James Fallows have an entire article on the subject of why America’s Muslims aren’t Qaeda-fodder?
Comment by Avedon —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:55 am
My first thought about this was, “How the hell am I going to fly home without a big, fat book?
My next thought was, “No way am I putting my laptop in check-in luggage.”
I’m trying to think about it on a larger scale but at the moment I’m still in, “Boy, that sure fucks me up,” mode.
Comment by Mona —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:59 am
Whether American Muslims are Al Qaeda fodder, well, that kid from CA who was — can’t remember the name. But clearly the Brits are producing them, like Richard Reid. Now locked up in Colorado’s Super Max prison.
Comment by Jon H —
August 10, 2006 @ 11:28 am
“Whether American Muslims are Al Qaeda fodder, well, that kid from CA who was — can’t remember the name. ”
In the case of the Americans, they’re both teenage converts from non-Muslim backgrounds, which is probably a very different situation.
Comment by Mel Gibson —
August 10, 2006 @ 11:51 am
Fucking Muslims, they start all the wars.
Comment by chris y —
August 10, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
“In the case of the Americans, they’re both teenage converts from non-Muslim backgrounds, which is probably a very different situation.”
So was Richard Reid. So was at least one of the London Tube bombers.
Comment by Jackmormon —
August 10, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
John Walker Lindh is the guy from Marin. He joined the Afghan Taliban, not a globalized version of al-Qaida. I really believe there’s a useful distinction to be made there: Lindh wasn’t motivated to blow up his neighbors in San Francisco, to put it crassly.
Comment by kwais —
August 10, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
I think that Mo hit the nail on the head. American Muslims are much less likely to be fanatical. The ones who did 9/11 were the exception, and even then, there is evidence that not all of them even knew what was going down.
Moslems in America, are just like Christians, or Jews in America. They kind of just hold it as their beliefs and heritage when they have time. Otherwise they are not that interested.
I just read a really really good book, called “My Jihad”, but an American convert to Islam. And how he went to Afghanistan and to Chechnya and to Kosovo. And he talks about how most American moslems want no part of any Jihad.
Comment by Nicholas Beaudrot —
August 10, 2006 @ 1:14 pm
I’m pretty sure there’s public survey data showing the British Muslim population as “more radical” — in terms of opposition to Israel, support of actions of terroist organizations, etc. — than the American Muslim population. What the root causes of this are are unclear.
Comment by Anarch —
August 10, 2006 @ 1:16 pm
For Mona.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 10, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
It’s ten years old, but Steven Emerson’s Jihad In America video documentary is still eye-opening. It’s hard to believe that PBS actually allowed this piece of anti-multiculti blasphemy on the air. It was such a gaffe (in their liberal eyes), that Emerson was blackballed at the behest of American muslim “civil rights” groups.
We could tolerate a “tiny minority” of Irish immigrants who were stereotypical drunks. We got used to the tiny minority of Italian immigrants who were mafiosi, though at great trouble and cost. But how can we get used to a tiny minority of Muslims, immigrant or homegrown, who see it as a religious duty to kill as many of us as they can?
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 10, 2006 @ 2:28 pm
Maybe the British radicals Muslims are more excluded from British society because of England’s more rigid class barriers.
Doesn’t mean that hate can’t sprout into terror here, of course…
Comment by Kevin —
August 10, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
Maybe not – if I were them, I’d argue that it’s possible to screen the merchandise entering the airport shops (they’ve got to be doing this already), and that while of course we can’t let people bring books and water bottles throgh security from home, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to carry on the screened and checked books purchased inside security.
Comment by Davebo —
August 10, 2006 @ 2:35 pm
Hate to go against the grain here, but I’d be happy to see most if not all carry on luggage banned. And it was suggested years ago by aviation safety experts not do to terrorism, but simply do to safety.
Don’t get me wrong, I have special bags that just barely fall under the maximum size and I love carrying on everything I can. But still, it would greatly speed up the security if no carry on baggage had to be searched.
That said, I haven’t read anything about banning passengers from carrying books on board.
Comment by Davebo —
August 10, 2006 @ 2:38 pm
Oh she’s a loud mouth alright. But I seriously doubt Debbie Schlussel will go completely over the edge and start blowing up buildings.
Comment by smartass sob —
August 10, 2006 @ 3:31 pm
{We could tolerate a “tiny minority†of Irish immigrants who were stereotypical drunks. We got used to the tiny minority of Italian immigrants who were mafiosi, though at great trouble and cost. But how can we get used to a tiny minority of Muslims, immigrant or homegrown, who see it as a religious duty to kill as many of us as they can?}
Immigration now! Immigration tomorrow! Immigration forever!!!
Comment by Jay C —
August 10, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
Eric Martin who, quite cleverly, links to Jim’s piece adds some more commentary which move towards and explanation of the relative lack of Islamist terror crap in the US: In a nutshell, vis-a-vis Europe:
– there are fewer ME immigrants, in a vastly bigger country.
– a large percentage of them are Christian/secular
– In the bulk of cases, Muslim Americans are involved in professions or trade, and are reasonably affluent (not masses of underclass in outer-city ghettoes)
– America is a generally accomodating country towards immigrants (tolerant where not actually welcoming).
– And, no tradition of “colonial” oppression.
Not to say that there are NO Islamist-influenced terrorists in the US at all: they are just way fewer and further-between. Fortunately.
Comment by The Thing —
August 10, 2006 @ 6:55 pm
” I seriously doubt Debbie Schlussel will go completely over the edge and start blowing up buildings.”
Maybe in Beirut.
Comment by dagny —
August 10, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
Muslims in America are just saner, for all the reasons mentioned above. They’re probably the nicest people in Wayne County. For an area not exactly known for its sterling history of fine race relations, you can nonetheless drive down Ford Road and have no conception that somewhere there are Indians and Pakistanis who don’t get a along.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
August 11, 2006 @ 3:41 am
Right, the US is basically lucky in that its disaffected underclass doesn’t have any real cultural or religious ties to the radical third world organizations du jour. Imagine radical pan-Africanism as our enemy in World War six or seven or whatever.
Comment by ajay —
August 11, 2006 @ 3:52 am
America is a generally accomodating country towards immigrants (tolerant where not actually welcoming).
Say what? Signed: the Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and (Especially) Black Populations Of America.
- And, no tradition of “colonial†oppression.
Que? Signed: the Entire Population of the Philippines, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Comment by Andromeda —
August 11, 2006 @ 5:06 am
Davebo: Grant and I have a friend who was going to be flying Heathrow–>NYC in a few days (this trip has been postponed). She’s our source for the “no books” thing. Apparently everything’s quite hysterical in London at the moment. Anyway, the basic idea is that there isn’t a list of things you *can’t* bring (the way there normally is); there’s a list of things you *can*, and anything not on the list is out. The list is something along the lines of “medications, if they have your name on them, and baby formula, if you have an infant.”
We’re really hoping it gets less awful before our flight to Heathrow in a month, because a transatlantic flight with no books sounds like cause for riot to me, and this pregnant lady is NONE too keen on six-hour flights with no snacks except those provided by the mercy of the flight attendants.
Comment by Ray —
August 11, 2006 @ 5:34 am
Apparently two of the people arrested were converts to Islam. http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1842283,00.html
the packing restrictions are here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778615.stm
I think you can buy stuff (books, food) once you go past the first security check, but I’m not sure.
Comment by Steve —
August 11, 2006 @ 7:47 am
In the bulk of cases, Muslim Americans are involved in professions or trade, and are reasonably affluent (not masses of underclass in outer-city ghettoes)
Is this a claim about generalized radicalism? Because the 9/11 participants weren’t members of the underclass.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 11, 2006 @ 8:45 am
#34 ajay:
As Clayton Cramer once said, “Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.”
#37 Steve:
Is this a claim about generalized radicalism? Because the 9/11 participants weren’t members of the underclass.
There’s strong resistance, left of center, to the idea that we can buy off terrorists with welfare state palliatives. Many libs have trouble processing the idea that the motives of these killers are religious in nature, and can’t be wheedled away with material incentives.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 11, 2006 @ 8:46 am
“can’t” buy them off, should be, sorry…
Comment by Ray —
August 11, 2006 @ 9:40 am
It like to see who these liberals are, who think that terrorists can be bought off by a welfare state. I suspect that most liberals, if they were to accept the perjorative associations of ‘buying them off’, would suggest different solutions.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 12, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
People who keep insisting that “poverty breeds terrorism” despite all the proof to the contrary are who I mean.
Comment by Ray —
August 13, 2006 @ 3:42 am
Funny, I’ve heard “poverty breeds crime”, but I must be meeting a completely different bunch of liberals to you, because most of the people I know put several things higher on the list of causes of terrorism.