In our “War on Terror” and corresponding demonization of foreign ideologies with their suicide bombers who threaten our very way of life, we seem to have completely ignored the daily threat of that uniquely American breed of terrorist: that misfit teen, disgruntled civil servant, and every other psychopath with access to a gun who now – almost on a weekly basis – enters one of our schools, universities, places of worship, or public areas, shoots a dozen people and then takes his own life.
CNN picks up the story for the day, but then it is over until the next suicide bomber hits the streets. Marines are not sent in. No “war” is declared. No billions spent. No legislation passed. Barely even a discussion. Rather, people living in caves praying to a different god are the problem. It makes you wonder, are we the fanatics?
It is telling that in our War on Terror, the government has told us that yeilding some of our privacy rights was essential for national security, but after one of these American suicide gunmen, any mention of limiting our supposed right to bear arms is considered unpatriotic and against our way of life.
Grave Error 
Excellent post.
You have completely misrepresented the case.
Fanatics are in every culture/society, across the globe, America gets no free lunch here either.
This is not a similar situation to Islamic terrorism, in any aspect.
Officials have said Wong was apparently upset about losing his job at a vacuum plant and about people picking on him for his limited English.
This isn’t even technically a domestic terrorist, he was an immigrant, (point one of the error of logic).
This has nothing to do with belief sets, (point two error of logic).
He, being Asian, and either randomly and wantonly expressing his despair; or possibly, targeting fellow Asians for reasons as of yet unknown, means this wasn’t ideological in any sense. This has to do with societal decay/genetic aberrants, (third point error of logic).
The Quran is said to often be misquoted, especially by non-Muslims. This is called an ignoratio elenchi fallacy; false or irrelevant conclusion.
Imams, clerics, Shahs, the Ayatollah; whoever is responsible for Sharia Law and declarations, Fatwah, make the perception, just so. As far as the larger part of the Islamic population, their apathy/stubbornness in dealing with these proposed misrepresented messages, makes them culpable at the minimum; more at complicitous.
Feel free to check with the FBI and CIA; the so-called “Islamic moderates” are very often the willing funders of the extremists.
They kill for a belief based on the falsehoods of a man who declared himself a messenger of an unseen and unprovable entity. A further falsehood. The Christians have had their era of wanton slaughter, and it had no choice but to come to an end. The Islamists have no such desire; outside of rhetoric and fanciful double speak.
The bottom line: When any book refutes the actuality of what is known, proven fact; and has an authority figure who demands that this error be accepted because it is in the book, that means it is time to burn the book, and cap the messenger.
In the end, there is no point of comparison between this instance and Islamic religious imperialism by means of terrorism.
“Islamic fanaticism”, and I say this with no intention of apologetics, is purely political and not religious — similar to our ideological pro-democracy terrorism where we bomb a country until it accepts our way of life and products.
We also have our brand of Christian fanatics in the U.S. (aka, the Republican Party) who wish to impose their anti-science moral code on the American public and who believe in some pretty scary stuff. I just think we need to solve our own “real” domestic problems before we worry about what other people are doing around the world. Ironically, most of the world thinks we are violent gun-carrying freaks. I am sure the numbers would prove this with a higher murder rate in the states than in any supposedly fanatical Muslim country, suicide bombers included.
“Islamic fanaticism”, and I say this with no intention of apologetics, is purely political and not religious — similar to our ideological pro-democracy terrorism where we bomb a country until it accepts our way of life and products.
No apologetics here either. Too many professionals with 20-30+ years in the ME, and ME culture say differently. I’ll have to defer to their knowledge. Everything that comes from the U.S. or the U.S. government is fantasy and fallacy; sometimes, people are just unworthy of life.
The “president” of Iran is just one example. The Taliban is religiously motivated, they have no politics.
If that’s the take, I agree with it; always been a proponent of “clean up your own backyard, before you criticise mine.” But then, Europe would be left with nothing at all to talk about, if they had to mind their own inadequacies and hypocrisies and stay out of American politics.
With most Muslim states, they are so archaic, you would never get accurate statistics; not withstanding, there is no impetus for them to allow reporting either. Muslims have never done anything but war with themselves and anyone around them since the dawn of time. It will never change.
Like I’ve told you before, I know too many Indians, and met a Sikh here or there … people with close contact with the Muslim “culture” … that’s the problem with sensationalist BS; lies always come home.
50 years of peace in Western Europe means that Western “culture” is more peaceful than Muslim “culture”. I am not quite sure that is accurate. I think we live with an amazing double standard and a host of generalizations about an entire region based on a few fanatics. For example, from my personal experience, Europeans are much more anti-American than Arabs.
My experiences, especially recent ones, are counter to that, almost entirely. I’ve met and spoken with at least 20 Brits in the past two months. Oddly, for all the media garbage, they seem to be bereft of knowledge of ordinary Americans; but all to MSM informed about our politics.
It would appear that between Europe and America, the largest problem is that “their people” don’t really know “our people” and visa versa. I think we are near clueless of the other, in largest sense.
Add in a couple French, Albanian, Italians and Germans … and you get a very distorted picture, as compared to the media images.
I’ve never stated that Western culture is “peaceful” … those aren’t my words; we’ve just evolved our politics to engage the world mostly through political and economic subterfuge.
Now that the village idiot is back in his hut, we aren’t likely to show too much muscle from the military.
The last bit on this, is just humans being; sum sic sum.