When Isn't It "Terrorism?"

Posted by DARRELL DAWSEY Monday, March 29, 2010 at 9:11 pm

27 Comments • Related Topics: michigan, national security, politics , fbi, hutaree, terrorism, timothy mcveigh

I wasn't really shocked that the feds raided a right-wing "Christian" militia headquartered about 70 miles outside of Detroit. If you know Michigan, the idea of some kooks crawling around the backwoods of Adrian with AK-47s just isn't that jarring. And given how crazy the political fringes of our entire nation have become of late, I guess I'm not even surprised that this Hutaree "Christian" militia has been accused of plotting to kill a law-enforcement official in order to launch a war on cops (and maybe others). Disturbed, sure. Shocked? Not so much.

But I was a little stunned at what I didn't read: Despite the laundry list of suspected offenses laid out by the FBI, I was a little curious as to why no one seems to want to say what seems quite obvious to me -- that these guys are being accused of outright terrorism.

The indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court today claims that the Hutaree planned to kill an unidentified member of local law enforcement and then attack the law enforcement officers who gather in Michigan for the funeral. According to the plan, the Hutaree would attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession with improvised explosive devices rigged with projectiles, which constitute weapons of mass destruction, according to the announcement by U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.

“Because the Hutaree had planned a covert reconnaissance operation for April which had the potential of placing an unsuspecting member of the public at risk, the safety of the public and of the law enforcement community demanded intervention at this time," McQuade said in the announcement. “Hutaree members view local, state, and federal law enforcement as the ‘brotherhood,' their enemy, and have been preparing to engage them in armed conflict.”

Each is charged with seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

I'm not saying that the Hutaree members who were arrested are terrorists or that they should be called terrorists. They haven't been convicted of anything. I'm talking more about the way we discuss the actions of homegrown extremists like these in so many of the early official narratives. I'm talking about how what the FBI is alleging fits the term quite snugly and  yet there seems to be a deliberate effort to sidestep the very word: terror. Same with the actual early news reports and headlines. In none of the early pieces from the mainstream outlets has the "t-word" come up. There's nothing about "alleged terrorism" or a "terrorist plot" or "suspected terrorists." There's not even a mention of which FBI task force took these guys down. (Was it the same Joint Terrorism Task Force we learned about on the same day we read reports about the slaying of a Detroit imam at a Dearborn warehouse last year?)

I'm not saying be sensational, but terrorism is exactly what these allegations sound like...

Their goal was to "intimidate and demoralize law enforcement, diminishing their ranks and rendering them ineffective," according to the indictment. The group then intended to use the incident to spark a "war" against law enforcement, using bombs, ambushes and prepared fighting positions.

Meanwhile, back in December, Northwest flight 253 had barely landed at Detroit Metro, reports about the attempted bombing had barely come out, before we were inundated with 'round-the-clock cries of an attempted "terror attack" on our city.

Now, imagine for a moment that, instead of cuffing a bunch of scruffy white "Christians" out in the boondocks this past weekend, the FBI had arrested a gaggle of, say, Arab-American Muslims who were threatening to shoot and bomb police officers. Imagine that the feds had busted Iraqi-Americans openly discussing religious war "to keep the testimony" of their god "alive" and openly plotting to kill their countrymen in the name of some misguided politico-religious ideal. Think we'd be as judicious about tossing around the "t-word" then? Neither do I.

But somehow, people like those in this Hutaree outfit get a pass, at least early on. Somehow, people like that Flying Teabagger who crashed his plane into an IRS building in Texas get to be at the center of huge debates about whether he deserved to be labeled a terrorist. There are even those who to this day refuse to call what he did a terrorist act. Extremist, maybe. But terrorist? That's somehow "debatable."

Of course, plenty of fair minded people know "terrorism" certainly can have American roots. Timothy McVeigh taught some of us that. The Ku Klux Klan taught many others. But despite this history, our public discourse is still too willing to associate incendiary terms like "terrorism"  with the alleged evil of one group (usually dark-skinned and/or foreign) over  another (usually white and from right next door).

If the members of this organization actually planned these terrible acts, then these guys apparently so willing to arm themselves for the "end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive" are no different than any plotters who've worked to harm law-abiding Americans in the name of Allah. If what the feds say is true, then their schemes need to regarded as a terrorist plot like any other -- and I'm hard-pressed to see any reason to debate whether to call it that.

[via detroit.blogs.time.com]

 

It Is Not Terrorism Unless You are Muslim

This morning, a man crashed a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. He left behind a manifesto, an angry rant which made it clear his actions were based on libertarian / teabagger ideology.
US Law defines "terrorism" as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents". International law defines it as violent acts motivated by a political, religious or ideological cause carried out to coerce, intimidate or influence a government or population. This act meets either definition. But the White House is saying its not terrorism.
The message is clear: crazed right wingers who murder because they hate taxation aren't terrorists. Instead, you're only a terrorist if you're Muslim. Its a disgusting double-standard, and another example of US bigotry.

It’s Not Terrorism If A White Guy Does It

Posted by Phoenix Woman on February 19, 2010

I remember how, in the aftermath of the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, the conservatives and the mainstream media that they’d bought up, bought off and/or scared into submission were all for doing summary rough justice on the perps, who they assumed had to be Evil Ay-Rab Heathens or some suchness.

But when it was found that the perps were Aryan white-supremacist conservatives, suddenly the Cons did a 180-degree spin worthy of Jim Rockford.

Suddenly, the perps’ motives became very important for us to know and understand.

Suddenly, the same people who would never have countenanced the claim in a Middle Eastern bomber’s pre-death video that he was doing it to fight the horrific oppression of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were solemnly explaining that poor widdle Timmy McVeigh killed 168 people, 19 of them children in the building’s day-care facility, because he had legitimate grievances. (Among these alleged grievances: Anger at the Clinton Administration for allegedly killing child molester and gun battler Vernon “David Koresh” Howell even though Howell was the one who ordered the burning of his compound and the shootings of himself and his followers — actions he’d been planning for some time even as he claimed good-faith negotiations with the Feds.)

We see this pattern repeat itself whenever white guys commit terrorist acts. The motives of Eric Rudolph, the guy who bombed Olympic Part in Atlanta, a gay nightclub and an abortion clinic, were treated as far more worthy of consideration than the motives of Richard Reid or would-be Fruit-of-the-Loom bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. (And no conservatives whined when Eric Rudolph was read his Miranda rights, the way they whined over Abdulmutallab’s being read his.) And we’re seeing it now, with the suicide plane bomber Joseph Stack, whose family fled his anger before he torched their house and then took his light plane and rammed it into an IRS building: Republican Senator Scott Brown — who was all for putting Abdulmutallab, a person who unlike Stack didn’t kill or even hurt anyone besides himself, in the military-justice system — got all touchy-feely concerned and understanding about that poor “frustrated” white guy Stack.

What’s even more astonishing is how often news of the crimes of white terrorists is effectively suppressed. The same GOP/Media Complex that dutifully transmits Republican talking points about Abdulmutallab has had comparatively very little to say about the following dangerous political terrorists:

– James G. Cummings, a white-supremacist nutjob whose father was a California real estate baron, was using his daddy’s money to try and build a “dirty bomb” using radioactive materials because he was ticked off that a black man won the 2008 election. The only reason we know about this is because he was killed by his wife Amber, who got fed up with his beating her up all the time and shot him before he could finish his bomb — and the whole bit about the bomb-making efforts didn’t come out until two months after she shot him

– William Krar, a guy from Noonday, Texas, who with his common-law-wife was making pipe bombs, suitcase bombs, cyanide bombs and other weapons of mass destruction and providing them to right-wing militia groups across the US. (He was caught when one of his shipments, to a New Jersey militia group, was misdelivered to a New York family who promptly turned the package and its contents over to law enforcement officials.)

– Shawna Forde and Jason Bush, white supremacists who broke into a Hispanic man’s home and brutally killed him and his nine-year-old daughter, for no other reason than sheer racial hatred.

– Dennis and Daniel Mahon, Illinois neo-Nazis (feel free to insert Blues Brothers joke here) who committed a 2004 mailbombing in Scottsdale, Arizona that seriously injured several persons.

Why didn’t these people become household names and bywords for terrorism, just like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? Especially since they all had much more in the way of weapons of mass destruction than he did — and were able to do more with them than he did.

Why is it different for them?

[via phoenixwoman.wordpress.com]

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