The Globe and Mail reports (yesterday):
A plan to storm the House of Commons, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper is among the sensational allegations to emerge yesterday after 15 men and youths charged in an anti-terrorism sweep appeared in court.
The startling revelations include purported plans to bomb power plants in Southern Ontario and take control of the CBC building in Toronto. The targets were on a shortlist the group had allegedly discussed in brainstorming sessions, before deciding on three: an unspecified Canadian military base, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in downtown Toronto.
Who are these people? Michael Barone nails it:
Canadian officials deserve great credit for breaking up this terrorist ring. But they and all of us need to state plainly what we are up against. "Islamofascist-
murderingnutjobs" is not elegant, but it has the advantage of accuracy.
There's a certain amount of denial, however, as Michelle Malkin reports:
Canadian law enforcement officials should be proud of busting a reputed Islamic terrorist network that may span seven nations. Instead, our northern neighbors are trying their damnedest to whitewash the jihadi ties that bind the accused plotters and their murder-minded peers around the world.
We live on a doomed continent of ostriches.
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase "broad strata" to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came. . . .
Undeterred by the obvious, Toronto police chief Bill Blair assured the public that the Muslim suspects "were motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith. . . . I am not aware of any mosques that these individuals were influenced by." Well, Chief Blindspot, try the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education. That's the Canadian storefront mosque where eldest jihadi suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal is, according to his own lawyer, a prayer leader and active member -- along with many of the other Muslim males arrested in the sweep.
Ralph Kinney Bennett addresses the "profiling" aspect of the case:
Hooray for Canadian law enforcement!
Hooray for profiling!
As the story unfolds of the arrest of 17 suspected Islamic terrorists and the seizure of a huge cache of explosive materials, Canadians, Americans, and free men everywhere can be thankful that the Canadian police and intelligence services had the courage to profile. . . .
As we have pointed out before here despite all the pretended piety over profiling, it continues to be one of the most important tools of preventive law enforcement. . . .
[T]he fact is law enforcement must discriminate as never before. It must make clear distinctions. It must differentiate. It must perceive the distinguishing features of terrorists and would-be terrorists. Unfortunately, thanks to the Islamofascists and the indelible and undeniable fingerprints they have left in New York, Washington, London, Madrid and elsewhere around the globe, square one in this exercise is usually at some mosque, where Muslims, usually of Arabic descent, gather.
In this particular case, a "store front" mosque in Mississauga, Ontario, the Al Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, has been reported as the regular meeting place of 6 of the 17 persons arrested in the alleged terrorist plot to blow up various important sites in and around Toronto. . . .
The imam of a suburban Toronto mosque told the New York Times "we are being targeted not because of what we've done, but because of who we are and what we believe in."
Well... no. And... yes. Canadian Muslims are not being "targeted." Certain Muslims in Canada are being singled out because they appear to have been targeting the Canadian people and their institutions. They are being singled out because they believe in the cold-blooded murder of anyone who does not share their beliefs. They are being singled out because of their quaint belief that a solidly packed container of ammonium nitrate with a detonator attached is somehow a petition for redress of imagined grievances. They are the profile within the profile.
Just as many innocent Muslims must put up with the unfair onus of guilt by association and the blind anger of a small corner of the public (mosques vandalized etc.), so Canadian law enforcement must put up with the unfair and ignorant accusations that they are somehow, preying on Muslims as a whole. In the fetid atmosphere of political correctness that seems to have settled over much of Canada, that takes real courage.
The point is, even if this whole Canadian investigation somehow were to unravel, the grim, quiet, veiled and sometimes untidy life-and-death struggle that the security services have been waging -- a struggle that involves profiling and skillful discrimination -- is right, vital and necessary and must continue.
The defense of life, liberty, and property requires us to address hard facts. One of those hard facts is that a certain subset of the populace is more likely than other subsets to indulge a peculiar taste for bombing and beheading its chosen enemies. Remember, they chose us as enemies, not vice versa.
