http://www.mcall.com/news/columnists/all-5terror-a.5845036may11,0,4508310.co
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The terror plots come close, but with comic flavor
Paul Carpenter
The grim machinations of international terrorism have come too close to
home.
The World Trade Center was within commuting distance of the Lehigh Valley,
and it was disconcerting to hear Allentown mentioned in air controller
conversations as one of the hijacked 9/11 jetliners passed directly
overhead.
Now we have learned that a bunch of accused terrorism schemers did much of
their ugly weapons training in beautiful Monroe County.
Six men were charged in connection with a scheme to attack the Fort Dix Army
installation in New Jersey. According to federal charges filed this week,
they hoped to use machine guns and other weapons to kill U.S. soldiers at
Dix, across the Delaware River not far from Bucks County.
All this is deadly serious business, but we can't help but take note of the
almost comic nature of what these imbeciles did -- after having their brains
washed by Osama bin Laden's videotaped demand for a jihad (holy war) to kill
infidels.
For one thing, they trained at a public gun range on Pennsylvania Game
Commission land in Monroe County, where they seemed to be trying to call
attention to themselves by blasting away with fully automatic assault
weapons. (Not only are machine guns banned at such ranges, they have been
illegal everywhere in America, generally, since back in 1934.)
These clucks were so inept they decided last year to go to a Circuit City
store in Mount Laurel, N.J., to transfer images of themselves from a video
tape to a DVD. Who could have guessed that somebody might notice they were
filmed firing machine guns while screeching ''Allah Akbar'' -- ''God is
great'' in Arabic.
Then they shot up infidel street lights around their rental home, just north
of Monroe County, with paintballs. Also, it was reported that a Carbon
County paintball company's database was investigated in connection with the
plot.
''We have enough, seven people. And we are all crazy. That's what is
needed,'' Shain Duka, one of the accused, was quoted as saying. ''It doesn't
matter to me [if arrested] or I die,'' said Serdar Tatar. ''I'm doing it in
the name of Allah.''
All that is sure to hurt the image of Islam, but I know Muslims in the
Lehigh Valley and they are as decent and intelligent as these clucks are
bloodthirsty and crackbrained.
Before we blame Islam, per se, how do terrorists get to be mindless puppets,
with Osama bin Laden pulling their strings?
It has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with religious
fanaticism that is able to gain great power.
The puppets were told that they were doing what God wanted, and if they
slaughtered enough infidels, they'd be rewarded in heaven with beautiful
virgins to ravish.
All that may seem silly to some Americans, but it's no more far-fetched than
some of the preaching popular here, especially on television. ( Send me
money and God will make you rich, or cure your ills .)
>From the Crusades and the Inquisition to Jonestown, dogmatic fanaticism has
given the world its worst atrocities.
It was not Islam that gave its blessings to Hitler with the Concordat of
1933. It was not Islam that fanaticized the Japanese army by telling its
young men that a squirt named Hirohito was a deity. It was not Islam that
orchestrated McCarthyism and various other crusades designed to subvert
American freedom.
I can remember when ''Kill a commie for Christ,'' which later became a
sarcastic slogan of the peace movement, began as a serious slogan for people
who cheered the Vietnam war -- as those puppets were told to do from many
pulpits.
Our real enemy is the fanaticism that imposes dogma by force -- from
despotism in Saudi Arabia to the placement of the Ten Commandments on a
courtroom wall in Easton.
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