Bravo. Similarly the more amateurish home grown terrorist plot in Canada (Toronto) was unearthed by a cooperating member of that community. That cooperation from, and sense of belonging for, the whole domestic Muslim community is our best collective defense.

global citizen

"Let's be clear here. We, the U.S., do not have a domestic home-grown terror problem."

You're setting yourself up for a fall with comments like that.

[bookmarked for (hopefully not) future use]

Regs, Shaggy

Hmmm... the Freeway Sniper and his copycat, Timothy McVeigh, the Order, the Militia movement, Aryan nations, Various extremist right wing religious paramilitaries and nutcases, the Unabomber, Eric Rudolf, those guys who shoot abortion doctors, the Anthrax terrorists, the guys (unknown) who made a habit of burning down black churches, cuban exile extremists.

Historically of course, we've got the KKK and various related anti-negro conspiracies and groups, we've got lynchings, James Earl Ray, Bull Conner, and the full complement going all the way back to Sam Huston, and those fellers in New England who would fall upon an Indian village and slaughter the bunch of them.

Of course, on the right side of the spectrum, we have the SLA, the Weathermen, and before them the Anarchists if the turn of the century.

But let's be fair, the writer was probably thinking only in terms of Muslim Terrorism, by swarthy non-white young middle eastern men who aren't from America... and have beards... and hygeine issues... and funny accents... and don't dress well.

Ah well, life's such a funny place, ennit?

I was going to say 'unless you are black.'

But then, I realized that is not true. It is possible in the eyes of many Americans for certain black persons born in America to parents and grandparents also born in America, to actually become a sort of pseudo-American.

After all, look at Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and that guy on the Supreme Court that gives Scalia his pedicures... Clarence Thomas?

All it takes is a handful of white ancestors (after all, we wouldn't want them to be *too* black), a certain amount of money, slavish obedience to whatever powerful white people say, and a cuthroat willingness to screw over black people. So basically, any black person in America can become an American. What a land of opportunity!

I would note that there have been some dramatic misfires on this front, most notably Michael Jackson and Marshal Mathers.

But still, onwards and upwards!

It is a mistake to translate that envy to counter-terrorism policy....Let's be clear here. We, the U.S., do not have a domestic home-grown terror problem. Getting tougher on communities of interest – including pronouncements to start profiling or focusing on minority populations – is exactly what we ought not to learn from Britain

Too late..., those men in Miami, were definitely terrorists masterminds, don't you think? They had no plans, no internet connections, no money ...but they SURrrrrE fit the profile didn't they?

What a great imitator DHS is, just like Britain interceded at the 'optimum moment' before the attack could be pulled off...we here in America caught those Miami 'terrorists' before they could 'activate' their plan as well.

The most serious home-grown attack on U.S. soil was Timothy McVeigh

O America would never let a significant fact like this get in the way, after all, McVeigh does not fit the profile. Wasn't there also another guy out of California that coverted to Taliban..he doesn't fit the profile either, though.  Not in America.

 Tougher surveillance, profiling, or efforts that risk alienation may give us a sense that we are doing something, but the long-term legacy of such efforts may prove self-destructive. Investing in those communities and asking for their assistance in the fight against terrorism -- not distancing them – is a smarter strategy.

Make no mistake Juliette, I like the way you think and I definitely agree that this would be the smarter strategy...but for America to do that would be just plain unAmerican...after all that is why we here in the states have all those Tough on Crime(another GOP meme that elected lots of GOP politicos) laws and now America is going to be just as biased with the profiling for 'national secruity interests' and generate Tough on Surveillance tactics and laws.

We are 'tough on surveillance' because it gets vote for the GOP.

After all, if we weren't 'tough on surveillance' DHS would not have captured those Miami 'terrorists' before they bombed the Sears Tower they did not have diagrams of.

One important reason they haven't is simply because unlike European countries, the US was not formed historically from a people like France (gauls, franks) or even a group of peoples like Britain (celts, saxons, normans).

We WANT immigrants to assimilate to our culture. It's how we render them non-threatening.

I was going to say 'unless you are black.'

hehehehehe...glad you said it.

After all, look at Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and that guy on the Supreme Court that gives Scalia his pedicures... Clarence Thomas?

hehehe, OJ too.. before he 'took out' Nicole.

All it takes is a handful of white ancestors (after all, we wouldn't want them to be *too* black), a certain amount of money, slavish obedience to whatever powerful white people say, and a cuthroat willingness to screw over black people. So basically, any black person in America can become an American. What a land of opportunity!

tell it!

I would note that there have been some dramatic misfires on this front, most notably Michael Jackson and Marshal Mathers

rofl..you are on a roll and sooooo on target.

But still, onwards and upwards!

yes yes, yes. what a 'nation of immigrants' ...last I checked Miami is full of Haitians, Jamaicans, and Bahamians who were able to immigrate in the same numbers as all those Cubans.

Let's all sing.. Sweet Home Alabama which will be followed by Jamie Fox singing ...America the Beautiful

If terror is considered the spreading of fear in the populace, plus advocating and practicing barbaric acts, then we certainly do have homegrown terrorists

Hmmm. This definition fits the KKK and the Southern Confederacy and more than likely their progeny, as well.

 In the White House

You think?

Well, I'm harsh, but not *too harsh* I think.

>How many societies truly live up to their ideals?

Is this an excuse for not living up to your own? Does that make it okay?

I have a friend who travels frequently in the United States, and one day, we got to talking about America and Americans.

I opined that Americans were just like Canadians, except with this hidden minefield built in, so that every now and then, for no obvious reason, something would set them off and they'd go wacko. It wasn't a criticism, just puzzling more than anything, this deep erratic streak of irrationality that seemed to be a part of the American character.

He said something though that stuck with me. He said "You can always tell who works for who in America, by the colour of their skin."

And as we discussed it, it became very clear that American society still operated on a very strict de facto segregation. A segregation that applied to residence, culture, employment and education opportunities, and so on.

Sure, the barrier is permeable, blacks go to white schools, and are now features at white universities. There are blacks climbing up at executive levels in corporations. There is a black middle class... I think there always was a black middle class, but it is now arguably more integrated in some ways with the white middle class. But it is still there.

Ever since that conversation, I have been struck more and more by the existence of racism as a defining feature of American society.

This is not to say that racism does not exist in Canada. It does, particularly in our treatment of Indians. Racism certainly exists in Europe and Africa, we have Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda as proof of that.

But I do think that there is something special and unique about American racism. It is a thread which has defined much of your history.

Take out slavery as it evolved from indenture to chattel ownership of blacks. Would you have had the Texas insurrection? The Mexican American War? Bleeding Kansas? Certainly, the civil war was all about slavery.

And beyond that, in the undoing of reconstruction and the relentless imposition of segregation, sharecropping and Jim Crow laws... Would any of these southern states have been the same, politically, if blacks had been allowed the right to vote? And would congress or Presidential elections have been the same? I don't think so.

I suppose you could argue that things would have been worse... though thats a dangerous argument, bordering as it does on racism.

But if you look at American politics, both local and national in the Jim Crow era, I think you will be struck by the vileness that poisoned American politics and policy as a result of racist dixiecrats. I'm not talking about such offensive things as protecting lynching... but I'm talking about actively regressive or unhelpful policies and programs, starving of education, of public works, of hospitals, the resistance to social programs and social justice.

Ultimately, the Jim Crow laws and Jim Crow politicians did their utter best to make the south a benighted, backwards, backwater, a land of illiteracy and incest, rotten teeth and pellagra, poverty and violence.

The south could have risen again, it could have been great. But in the effort to repress its blacks, the south reduced itself to a degenerate swamp. The new deal and liberalism, federal public money did much to lift the south up over the past 60 or so years. But let's never forget what it really was.

Conservatives often criticize Liberals for believing in social engineering as a way to change human conditions.

But one the most dramatic, the most persistent and the most successful example of social engineering in Jim crow and the complex of legal, quasi-legal, and illegal sanctions, restrictions, economic and political disenfranchisement, social barriers and violence that was applied to American blacks for almost a century.

See, the truth that every racist secretly knows, is that black people are just as smart, just as gifted, just as industrious, just as talented as white people. People are people, there's no real difference.

And how can we be sure that racists know this in their secret hearts? Because, if they did not truly believe this... then they wouldn't have needed Jim Crow, they wouldn't have needed segregation or social or economic disenfranchisement or lynching.

Because if blacks really were inferior, then in the open and free and fair marketplace, they would not have been able to compete. Their inferiority would have dragged them down.

You see, American racism, Jim Crow, didn't push blacks down because they were inferior. If they really had been, there would have been no need for any of that.

Instead, Jim Crow and its accessories, was nothing more and less than a colossal collective effort at social engineering to PUT BLACKS DOWN AND TO KEEP THEM THERE. It was nothing more or less than an ongoing effort to fuck over, to damage, to permanently disable and disenfranchise an entire population.

So, in a sense, its kind of funny for Conservatives to criticize Liberals for a handful of timid and halfhearted, limited social engineering projects like affirmative action, when they themselves were the architects of a successful, massive, unbelievably comprehensive and appallingly expensive (this sort of racism was not cheap) social engineering project whose deliberately inflicted damage continues to this day.

And I suppose this takes us to today. De facto segregation, structural racism is alive and well in the United States. Maybe you're not racist, I'm happy to grant that. Maybe most Americans aren't racist...

But there's no denying that Nixon's southern strategy was based on luring southern dixiecrat racists. No denying that at all.

There's no denying that attacks on New Deal social programs are based, on some level, on the fact that these programs were extended to blacks as well as whites. A social program for whites? Well and good. That social program for blacks...

There's no denying that Willy Horton did far more than Dan Quayle to get Bush I elected.

There's no denying that 'driving while black' and racial profiling exists. Wesley Snipes was once wrestled out of his car and had a gun pointed at his head by police officers. How many white people have had guns pointed at their heads by police officers?

Look at the numbers of American blacks caught up in the criminal justice system. Look at the differences in laying charges, in prosecutions, and definitely in sentencing, in terms of equivalent black or white crimes.

Look at the naked racism of 'felon voting laws', and the fact that in Florida, auditing or vetting of 'felon lists' pre-selected for 'black sounding' names.

Some, perhaps many, Americans are racist, though the ugly and overt racism is mostly a thing of the past. It's no longer fun and games to drag a black person in chains behind your pickup truck. Certainly racism on some level plays a major role in right wing politics.

But more than that, America is corrupted by a structural or institutional racism which frustrates good will, and invariably rigs the system to damage black people. All you need for proof of that is to look at the 9th Ward of New Orleans. Is the confluence of social, cultural, economic and political factors which destroyed the 9th Ward and now conspires to keep it destroyed truly colour blind? I don't think so.

The truth is that America is at war. America for over a century and a half has been carrying out a vast guerilla war on many levels with a persistence and dedication that would otherwise be admirable. This war is, apart from the conquest and acquisition west of the 13 colonies, America's most impressive accomplishment. America has and is waging war on its black people.

And you're winning.

Congratulations.

For over 2 hundred years American society  has lived up to their ideals for European immigrants.

Let's not go overboard: Micks, Guineas, Kikes, Polacks, Hunks and Bohunks, Canucks, et cetera, et cetera. 

Well, there's nothing wrong with harshness in my view. Nor was it particularly off point.

American society has always been willing to accept or embrace immigrants based largely on their conceptual whiteness.

If you look at the literature and rantings of the time, neither the Irish nor the Italians were originally considered 'white' or white enough.

I would also suggest that non-white immigrants, particularly those with the wrong colour skin, don't have an easy time getting into the country or blending in. Not that they can't with perserverance. But the welcome matt is... shall we say... tattered?

But what the hell, perhaps I'm wrong. Tell you what, let's go round up a hundred Mexican immigrants and ask them what they think of America as an 'immigrant friendly' melting-pot society, accepting one and all with open arms....

Now, maybe they'd agree with you. Maybe they'd agree with me. Maybe they'd say something else. To tell you the truth, with all this excitement, I plumb forgot. I'm willing to let the discussion end there and live with what they say. How about you?

As Harry Callaghan once said: You feeling lucky?

I'll agree with you Peter, that American ideals are things to be proud of.

Uhm... not to get in the way of all this back patting, but I think that proportionately, countries like Britain, France and Germany have had a lot more islamic immigration than the United States.

I've read someplace that Turkish and Islamic or Indian immigrants form something like two or three per cent of the populations of these countries and that this has occurred largely over one or two generations.

In European countries, Turkish and poor Arab or Pakistani immigrants perform roughly the same role as Mexican immigrants in American society. They're cheap low end immigrant labour.

So really, I suppose the real comparison would not be between Europe's Muslims and America's Muslims. It would be between Europe's Muslims and America's Mexicans.

Ah, but listen to me. It's all just crazy talk! Go ask any Mexican and he'll tell ya.

How did this thread get hijacked by a bunch of blather about racism in America? I am more than happy to discuss the distance between the dream of America and the reality, but this is hardly an appropriate forum for that.

Juliette's point is vital, not just for preventing terrorism here, but worldwide. People who have a stake in their society do not commit terrorist acts, generally speaking. I work closely with the Middle Eastern population in the greater Detroit area. These are productive, hardworking people who generally see America as a land of opportunity. The fact that they have been able to take advantage of that opportunity here makes them pro-American, anti-terrorist stakeholders in their communities, and in the country.

Policies that marginalize this particular group of immigrants will be counterproductive in two ways: first, the seeds of resentment that are already undoubtedly present will grow; and their fellow immigrants, whether through fear or their own resentment, will be less likely to coopoerate in the discovery and prosecution of those whose resentment is leading to terrorist activity.

Finally, in response to the comparisons of our treatment of blacks to our treatment of Middle Easterners: the crimes and ostracization visited upon blacks throughout our history was a mistake. And it led to a form of terrorist activity like the riots in L.A. The fact that it was in response to an insult, real or perceived, is irrelevant: the historical racism led to the violence, as they are two sides of the same coin. Much as grievenace, real and perceived, have been at the root of so much of the violence in the Middle East. Let's not start the whole dysfunctional process over with the Middle Eastern populations in his country.

It is quite a story, but the other side of it isn't much told either - it's more striking when you consider the hardships inflicted on Muslim immigrants. In New York where I live, hundreds of immigrants were rounded up after Sept. 11, and family members had to resort to wandering from prison to prison in hope that someone would tell them whether or not their loved ones were there. Here in Brooklyn, jailhouse beatings were not that uncommon - at least one man was brought into a room with a flag on the wall and slammed into it until his teeth were permanently loosened (I used to work for an organization that has sued over such abuses). Estimates of attrition in the Brooklyn Pakistani community are sad: a quick google search shows that the Borough President's office put the population at 125,000 in 2004 and only 100,000 in 2005.

If there is a bigger problem in Europe than the U.S. (the more I think about it, I'm not sure that you can make geographic assumptions like this about a shifting global problem), it's not for want of reasons to be alienated.

This is a great post. As someone who has both Southern and Canadian roots, the Southern part of my personality sometimes has a thin skin about criticism of the South, and I would be tempted to point out whatever small overgeneralizations you might have made. But you made so many truly excellent points that I just don't feel like going that direction. Racism is a curse, in many different ways that you have elaborated with great insight.

Juliette could have used better phrasing than "not have a home-grown domestic terror problem" but her essential point, and brewmn's, holds: Muslim immigrants in the US are not ghettoized and marginalized the way they are in much of Europe; they're generally well-integrated, regardless of what the "general population" might think of them. The main importance of this is that it means that, unlike many European countries, the US doesn't have significant numbers of poorly-educated and poorly-employed alienated young men in its Muslim communities, and those are the kind of people (Muslim or not) who are going to be attracted to extremist movements. This is a security advantage we have, and we need to use it rather than risk squandering it by doing anything that could alienate or ghettoize the American Muslim community.

True. Wouldn't it be great if we could distinguish more readily between our idea of who we are and who we actually are. Too often we pretend we've achieved something we're only on the road to achieve -- if we pay attention and work hard. Progress doesn't just happen...