Maybe FBI needs to find a real terrorist
Share with others:
Let's hope that one day, the FBI will get around to disrupting a homegrown terrorist network it didn't have a hand in creating.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old Somali-American arrested in Portland, Ore., for attempting to detonate what turned out to be a fake bomb during a Christmas celebration, is the latest terrorist wannabe to lower the median IQ for so-called American jihadists.
We should all be suspicious of terrorist sting operations where the FBI does most of the heavy lifting.
Having said that, if convicted, Mr. Mohamud deserves many decades behind bars for his depraved indifference to the blood that would have been on his hands if his "bomb" had been supplied by someone other than the FBI.
Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse when it comes to culpability for street crime, naivete and stupidity aren't get-out-of-jail-free cards for amateur terrorists, even if they're teenagers.
Every home-grown jihadist, whether a dimwit or not, should think twice about participating in a conspiracy to kill Americans if there's even a remote possibility that it could be an FBI sting operation.
If uncertainty doesn't work as a deterrent, then it would be a crime not to give a would-be conspirator several decades in federal lockdown.
My concern isn't about the justice of sentencing someone convicted of "masterminding" a terrorist plot to decades in prison, even if it turns out to be a conspiracy of one.
All Americans who value their civil liberties should be a little nervous about a process that puts criminally inept citizens with known terrorist sympathies -- but no logistical or financial resources -- on the fast track to prosecution.
After all, political alienation, even when it manifests itself in threats of anarchy and murder, is no rare commodity in American life. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the protection even of those with "extremist" views as long as they don't act on them.
More questions should be asked about the government's role in "convincing" disaffected and possibly deranged citizens that terrorism is a viable path. The line between legitimate police work and entrapment is getting murkier with each case.
First Published November 30, 2010 12:00 am
