Who Bombed Times Square? Must be the Swedish Grandmother

Who Bombed Times Square? Must be the Swedish Grandmother
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Pretend for a moment that you are a New York detective. It is May 1, 2010, and a hot dog vendor has discovered a green SUV parked on West 45th Street near Broadway, just off of Times Square, emitting smoke. The bomb squad has already determined that the vehicle contains propane tanks, gasoline, fireworks and an alarm clock rigged to set off a massive explosion.

Imagine you are tasked with finding the perpetrator. Where do you start your investigation? Do you start with: (A) a right-winger opposed to the health bill; (B) a Swedish grandmother upset at losing the ticket lottery for "Next to Normal"; or (C) a radical Muslim trying to kill Americans?

If you're New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, your answer is (A). "If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that," Bloomberg posited. "Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything."

If you're Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, your answer is (B). "Right now, every lead has to be pursued," said Napolitano the day after the attempted bombing. "I caution against premature decisions one way or another." Napolitano's Homeland Security Department immediately released photographs of a white guy changing his shirt in the area and plastered those pictures all over the Internet. Turns out the guy was probably just warm and wanted to shed his overshirt.

If you're a rational human being, your answer is (C). Since President Obama took office, there have been four Muslim terror incidents on American soil. On June 1, 2009, Muslim convert Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad drove up to a military recruiting station and opened fire, killing one private and wounding another. It took President Obama two days to comment on the shooting. On Nov. 5, 2009, Muslim militant Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 people and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood in Texas. Obama's immediate response: "I would caution against jumping to conclusions." On Dec. 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 289 people aboard. Obama responded by giving Abdulmutallab a lawyer and reading him his Miranda rights. Finally, there was the attempted Times Square bombing, during which the Obama administration reacted with confusion and caution.

There has been one high-profile violent incident perpetrated by a right-winger since Obama took office: the May 31, 2009 shooting of abortionist George Tiller. There have been a bevy of high-profile violent incidents by registered Democrats or liberals: the suicide airplane attack by Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, against the IRS; the liberal who bit off the finger of an ObamaCare opponent in Thousand Oaks, Calif.; the murderous rampage by Obama-lover Amy Bishop at the University of Alabama; the beating of black man Kenneth Gladney by Service Employee International Union thugs in St. Louis; the Earth Liberation Front's destruction of KRKO-AM's radio towers in Seattle.

None of these incidents by non-Muslim Americans were designed to create mass casualties among random Americans or members of the American military. All of the radical Muslim attacks were. Using rudimentary reasoning skills, it wouldn't take long to hit on the hypothesis that perhaps the Times Square attempted bombing was linked to a radical Muslim.

But we live in a country where rudimentary reasoning skills have been banned if they offend politically correct sensibilities. So our politicians suggest that tea partiers were behind the attempted bombing (that suggestion, not coincidentally, fits with President Obama's attempts to label his domestic political opponents terrorists). They suggest that it could have been anybody -- anybody! -- behind the propane, gas and gunpowder. Meanwhile, they don't place radical Muslim terrorists on no-fly lists. Only when the proof is indisputable do they finally confirm what everybody with half a brain suspected all along -- and then they hope to get lucky.

It's fair for Obama to tell us not to jump to conclusions on the heels of a terrorist attack. But that's not what Obama and his allies do. Instead, they jump to wrong conclusions purposefully and maliciously. They misallocate resources to deal with the fictional threats they create in their own minds. And our true enemies laugh. Radical Muslims know what they want to do, and they know we know what they want to do -- but worst of all, they know we will do nothing. One of these days, our law enforcement won't be so lucky, and our deliberate self-delusions will result in the spilled blood of our citizens.