A few years ago The New Republic published an article denying that there were Muslim terrorists in the United States. It explained why the Muslim immigrants were different from those in Europe and also why America was different from Europe. I once heard this piece being quoted in an argument about the perils of Islamic terrorism at a Cambridge restaurant. "Oh my," I said to myself and to the folk with whom I'd been eating. "Magazines can be dangerous, too."
There is not too much of this nonsense around these days. And almost everybody has learned the truth. Of course, there are some so-called civil libertarians who want us to do nothing about.
Judith Miller, who sat in a jail for 85 days in defense of the First Amendment because she wouldn't tell who told her about Valerie Plame, has published in Saturday's New York Post an article, "A Bullet Dodged," about the terror ring circled around an Afghani immigrant Najibullah Zazi. My Muslim terrorists, indeed.
"A Bullet Dodged," By Judith Miller:
The 12-page indictment against Najibullah Zazi should make it clear that Americans, especially New Yorkers, have dodged yet another bullet -- or, in this harrowing case, a weapon of mass destruction.Until the indictment was filed Thursday, news stories on Operation "High-Rise" (as the police call their frenetic investigation of Zazi) made little effort to contain their skepticism. If the innocent-looking 24- year-old Afghan immigrant was such a danger, experts opined, why were he, his father and a cleric who had tipped them off to federal surveillance only being charged with having lied to the FBI?
Now we know. The new court documents accuse Zazi and still unnamed others of having plotted for over a year to "use one or more weapons of mass destruction" in the US. According to the government, Zazi had recently bought bomb-making supplies from beauty-supply stores and sought "urgent" help in making the chemical explosives -- specifically, TATP, the type of bomb used in the 2005 London attacks and attempted in 2001 by Richard Reid, the infamous shoe-bomber.
Click here to read the whole thing.