The quick response to the hastily published list of 78 “terrorism” incidents which the Administration feels haven’t garnered enough media attention has been to point out that many entries are misspelled (“ATTAKERS” and “SAN BERNADINO”, for example). That’s a cheap and easy criticism. First, who hasn’t had an employer ask you to drop everything you’re doing and bang out a report immediately, due 30 minutes before being tasked with the assignment? Second, for whatever reason, Word doesn’t automatically spell-check words that are in all-caps, so, there won’t necessarily be red squiggles to catch your attention. (Then again, unless all the names on the list have been added to Word’s spell-check dictionary, the document was probably a sea of red squiggles, anyway, so…💁♂️)
No, there are more problematic aspects of the list, more so even than the incidents which absolutely *did* receive wall-to-wall coverage (Nice, for example, and San Bernardino–which led to a huge fight between the FBI and Apple regarding unlocking a phone, and which led to Trump calling for a boycott of the latter).
Unnamed Individuals
One such problem is that some of the attackers are unnamed. The entry for a knife attack in NYC in October 2014, for example, simply says it was conducted by a “US Person.” Googling “knife attack October 2014 Police officer New York City” returns a result for an October 24, 2014 story about a man named Zale Thompson, who, it was eventually determined, had been discharged from the Navy for misconduct. While it appears Mr. Thompson had converted to Islam, officials determined he had no ties to extremist groups.
Since Mr. Thompson’s name is clearly laid out in the article, one wonders why the list promulgated by the government omits it. The same question applies to the incident in Garland, where Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were determined to have been responsible for an attack on a community center. And for the Boston attack, which was apparently carried out by Usaamah Rahim with assistance from someone named David Wright. And for the January 2016 Philadelphia police officer shooting apparently carried out by Edward Archer. Again, all these names were found *in the numerous news articles reporting on the incidents*. And it turns out that many if not all of the domestic incidents were carried out by US citizens.
Only Muslims Listed
Another problem with the list is that it focuses attention only on incidents with ties, tenuous though they may be in some instances (the Columbus machete attack, for example), to Islam. The shooting attack on Comet Ping Pong pizza after fake news reports surfaced post-election of a child sex ring tied to Podesta being operated out of the basement, is not on the list. The recent mosque attack in Quebec carried out by an apparent Canadian Trump supporter is also not on the list. Dylann Roof is not on the list, either. If the kids didn’t need breakfast right now, I’m sure I would have no problem digging up at least 78 incidents–foreign and domestic–of violence carried out by non-Muslims and with a sexual, political, racial, or religious motivation.
The Administration’s strongly tailored and over-hyped focus on the “threat” of Islam (more people in America are killed by toddlers with guns than by “so-called” terror attacks), however, creates the impression that the only threat to our country’s safety and security is Islam, and that discrimination–and even more erosion of our civil liberties and national identity–in the name of security will keep us all “safe.” That is simply, and, obviously, not true.
We all want to keep our loved ones safe, and we all want to do everything we can to protect ourselves. The administration’s siege-mentality attempts to create an atmosphere of grievance and paranoia, coupled with outright lies (Bowling Green Massacre, denigrating refugees by calling them illegal immigrants, etc) and mind-boggling antagonism of allies, do little to advance those goals.
