From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Celebrate
Diversity!
David Rising of the Associated Press does some digging into the backgrounds
of the men allegedly behind the weekend's foiled terror plots:
They had diverse backgrounds, coming from countries around the globe, but all shared youth and worked in medicine. They also had a common goal, authorities suspect: to bring havoc and death to the heart of Britain.
The eight people held Tuesday in the failed car bombing plot include one doctor from Iraq and two from India. There is a physician from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from the Middle East. . . .
"To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area--I think that's a planning impossibility," said Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now at London's Chatham House think tank.
"A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK," he said.
Although the project failed in its ultimate goal, no doubt there are lessons here for the corporate world in how to bring diverse people together in a common purpose.
From the standpoint of counterterrorism, however, it may be more productive to focus on what they have in common rather than their differences. Bob Ayers suggests that the suspects may share "some common ideology," but what could it be? We noticed a few clues that may warrant further investigation.
Here is a list of the suspects' names and nationalities from Rising's piece:
- Muhammad Haneef, from India.
- "Another Indian doctor."
- Mohammed Jamil Asha, "from Jordan of Palestinian heritage," and
his wife, Marwa, nationality not specified.
- Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla, from Iraq.
- Khalid Ahmed, from Lebanon.
- Two unnamed suspects "thought to be from the Middle East. . . . British media said they were from Saudi Arabia, but police refused to comment."
So the countries from which the suspects hail or may hail are India, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia. Well, that is diverse. Certainly there's no pattern here.
Or is there? Rising's report includes this intriguing bit of information:
Dr. Shiv Panbe, former chairman of the British International Doctors Association, said the two Indian nationals in custody were Muslims.
That got us to wondering what the religious background of the other suspects was. Rising doesn't say; he was probably embarrassed to ask. After all, religion and politics are two things you just don't discuss.
But looking at that list of countries again, we had a hunch. We checked the CIA World Factbook and found these statistics:
- Iraq is 97% Muslim.
- Jordan is 92% Sunni Muslim.
- Lebanon is 59.7% Muslim.
- The West Bank is 75% Muslim, and the Gaza strip is 98.7% Muslim.
- Saudi Arabia is 100% (!) Muslim.
Now, maybe the Lebanese guy is a Christian. Maybe the chaps from "the Middle East" are Israelis, not Saudis. Maybe the fellow who is of "Palestinian heritage" is part of the violent settlers' movement. But there is also the possibility, however remote, that all eight of these terror suspects are Muslim.
Why would that matter? Well, last month, Reuters quoted Jessica Stern, a Harvard expert on violent extremism, as saying, "The problems arising from Christian or Jewish extremism are not threatening to the world in the same way as Muslim extremism is."
Dear reader, we strenuously caution you against jumping to any conclusions. Maybe the suspects are animal-rights zealots or antiabortion fanatics. Even if they are all Muslims, who's to say that isn't a crazy coincidence? We're just putting this out here as a lead for David Rising or some other enterprising reporter to follow up on.
Great
Moments in Socialized Medicine
The BBC elaborates on another common thread tying together the alleged conspirators
in the British terror plot:
Eight people arrested in connection with failed car bombings in Glasgow and London all have links with the National Health Service, the BBC has learned.
Seven are believed to be doctors or medical students, while one formerly worked as a laboratory technician.
Yesterday the Times of London offered this chilling report:
An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq boasted before last week's failed bombings in London and Glasgow that his group was planning to attack British targets and that "those who cure you will kill you," The Times has learnt.
The warning was delivered to Canon Andrew White, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, and could be highly significant as the eight Muslims[*] arrested in the wake of the failed plot are all members of the medical profession.
Canon White told The Times that he had passed the general warning, but not the specific words, to a senior official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in mid-April.
Of course, the warning would probably have been taken more seriously if "those who cure you will kill you" were not also a description of business as usual at the NHS.
* Aha, our hunch was accurate!
Dr. Evil--II
On Monday
we observed that physicians seem overrepresented among the ranks of terrorists,
and on Tuesday
we published some readers' musings as to why this may be the case. We're not
the only one to notice this, and a couple of bloggers' observations seem pertinent.
This is Michael
Ledeen at National Review Online:
I think it has something to do with what Mel Brooks once referred to as "that total indifference to pain and suffering" that is necessary to be a good doctor. You have to be "clinical" about all that, because you can't afford to have your judgment swayed by real sympathy with the sufferer.
Jack Risko of Dinocrat.com notes:
Mohammed Atta was an architect. These men are doctors. It has been said that architects and doctors arrogate to themselves some of the creative and life-giving attributes associated with God, which idolatry or human presumption is said to be a terrible sin in Islam, though there are of course many Muslim architects and doctors. Moreover, these professions have been important in creating the Modern World.
There are men and women who can make an accommodation to life, and there are those individuals who are tortured by the contradictions between the real world and what they have been taught to believe as true. (Such men often burn with self-loathing; a "paradise" achieved by suicide, murder, and fire would appear to fit pretty well psychologically with their warped experience of the world.) It is therefore not at all surprising that men in such professions as architecture and medicine come to embody the existential crisis of Islam in the Modern World and wind up choosing the evil path. Tragic, but not surprising.
Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker says that "my friend Larwyn" (also a correspondent of this columnist) speculates that Islamist terror groups use physicians in part to "aggravate ethnic tensions" between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West:
Who, she writes, is going to be in a hurry to keep that appointment with Dr. Hamid? By sowing such suspicions, the Islamists make life difficult for the peaceful Muslims, and hope to drive them to radical Islam.
The Australian, meanwhile, reports that the father of one of the suspects doesn't believe his boy did it:
Mr Asha said heard the news on the BBC and told The Times he could scarcely believe what was happening.
"My son is incapable of such acts," he said. "Not all Arabs are terrorists."
He acknowledged that his son was a "devout Muslim", but insisted he did not belong to any militant Islamic groups and that his only goal in life was to become an outstanding doctor.
My son, the doctor. How quickly they blow up!
All
in the Family
You almost can't help but grudgingly admire the absolute and total shamelessness
of Hillary and Bill Clinton, the former and possibly future first lady. Given
Mrs. Clinton's lesser half's troubled history with the pardon power, one would
have expected it to be an awkward moment for her when President Bush spared
Scooter Libby prison time in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. How would she finesse
this one?
By being completely brazen, as it turns out. The Associated Press reports from Keokuk, Iowa, that Mrs. Clinton "drew a distinction" between the Libby commutation--"which she has harshly criticized--and her husband's 140 pardons in his closing hours in office":
Her husband's pardons, issued in the closing hours of his presidency, were simply routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none were aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy, she said.
Earlier, Mrs. Clinton issued a statement saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."
But let's go back and review some of Mr. Clinton's pardons. The one everyone remembers is that of Marc Rich, the fugitive tax evader who renounced his citizenship and whose wife was a big Clinton donor. (Coincidentally, Rich was a client of Scooter Libby, then a lawyer in private practice.) But from CNN, here's a contemporaneous list of other 11th-hour pardons:
- Roger Clinton, who was convicted of drug-related charges in the 1980s.
He was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 1985 to conspiring
to distribute cocaine. He cooperated with authorities and testified against
other drug defendants.
- Susan McDougal, a former real estate business partner of the Clintons.
She was sentenced in 1996 and released from prison in 1998. She was convicted
of four felonies related to a fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan that
she and her husband, James McDougal, never repaid. One tenth of the loan amount
was placed briefly in the name of Whitewater Development, the Arkansas real
estate venture of the Clintons and the McDougals. . . .
- Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development
during Clinton's first term in office. He was convicted of making false statements
to FBI agents conducting a background investigation of him when he was nominated
to the Cabinet post in 1993. They included misleading investigators about
cash payments he made to a former mistress.
- Former CIA Director John Deutch. The one-time spy chief and top Pentagon official was facing criminal charges in connection with his mishandling of national secrets on a home computer.
Among the beneficiaries of Mr. Clinton's pardons, then, were his own brother, a central figure in the Whitewater scandal, and two members of his own cabinet, one of whom, unlike Libby, actually faced charges of mishandling national secrets. Yet Mrs. Clinton can keep a straight face while throwing around charges of "cronyism"? This borders on sociopathy.
Wannabe
Pundits
"Neocon pundit William Kristol recently wrote that [Donald E.] Westlake
deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature. The neocons haven't been right about
much lately, but Kristol just may be on to something this time."--from
Thomas Gaughan's review of Westlake's crime novel "What's So Funny?"
in Booklist, published by the American Library Association
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
- "If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language,
then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting
the same words in similarly fleeting contexts. That, in essence, was the decision
on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy
that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing
obscene language."--Stephen
Labaton, New York Times, June 5
- "Trickle-down behaviorists, beware: if George W. Bush can use a popular synonym for dung, as he did when talking to Tony Blair at last year's G-8 summit, and if Dick Cheney, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, can deploy a word usually meant to refer to sexual intercourse, then who are we to demonize the lowly entertainers and truck drivers who employ such language on a regular basis? This, essentially, was the argument of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals when, last month, it prohibited the F.C.C. from fining television networks for broadcasting what it called 'fleeting expletives.' "--Ben McGrath, The New Yorker, July 9 issue
Good Thing He Banned Weapons, or It Might Have Succeeded
- "Mayor of Mogadishu Bans Weapons"--headline, Associated Press,
May 4
- "Mogadishu Mayor Survives Attempt on Life"--headline, Associated Press, July 5
As
Long as You Spell My Name Correctly
"An article last week about inexpensive dresses misstated the name of a
clothing store on Broadway. It is Yellow Rat Bastard, not Dirty Yellow Bastard."--correction,
New York Times, July 5
What
Were the Hockey Scores?
"Russia Wins 2014 Olympic Games"--headline, Associated Press, July 4
If
She Can Testify, He Probably Didn't Kill Her
"Girl, 13, Stabbed Little Brother; but Teen Testifies Boyfriend Killed
Boy--Not Her"--headline, Brantford (Ontario) Expositor, July 4
'If
I Should Call You Up, Invest a Dime'
"Turtles to Test Wireless Network"--headline, Associated Press, July 4
'Crazy,
but That's How It Goes, Millions of People Living as Foes'
"Ozzy Osbourne to Help Taiwan in U.N. Membership Quest"--headline,
Reuters, July 4
Where
Every Exam Is an Acid Test
"College Offers Degree Programs in Citrus"--headline, Bay News 9 Web
site (Tampa, Fla.), July 4
'Do
I Look Fat in This Skirt?'
"Euro Skirts With Record High; Pound Hits 26-Year Peak"--headline,
Agence France-Presse, July 3
Dwarf
Tossing Rears Its Ugly Head
"Man in PSL May Have Hit Brother With Gnome"--headline, TCPalm.com
(Treasure Coast, Fla.), July 5
Dallas
Was Not Amused
"Penguins Add Stanley Cup Vets Sykora, Sydor to Kid Stars"--headline,
Associated Press, July 2
News
You Can Use
"Paris Hilton: Don't Drink and Drive"--headline, Associated Press,
July 4
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Russian Music Site Down, Sister Site Up"--headline, Associated
Press, July 3
- "People in the News: Larry the Cable Guy Gets His Own Beer"--headline,
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, July 2
- "Alameda Council Will Consider Symbolic Iraq Resolution"--headline, Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, July 4
Un-American
Activities
The Minnesota Legislature has passed a law "that goes into effect at year's
end requiring every Old Glory sold in state stores to be domestically produced,"
the Associated Press reports. Sell a foreign-made U.S. flag in the Land of 10,000
Lakes, and you'll risk a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.
"Whether Minnesota's law violates international trade agreements--and whether anything would be done about it--is an open question," the AP adds. What is clear, though, is that this is a highly unpatriotic measure. The banners of foreign-made banners would ensure that flags are more expensive, thus discouraging people from flying them. Poor patriots will be hardest hit.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Gerry McCracken, Martin Boskovich, Daniel Sonnet, Steve Nieters, Kerry O'Connell, Adam Phillips, Gregory Farnell, Joel Goldberg, Michael Segal, Dennis Giangreco, Naftali Friedman, Mark Kirby, Gordon Jones, Alan Ridgeway, Harvey Heinbach, Timothy Knowlton, Rod Pennington, Michael Ellard, P.J. Moriarity, Kathleen Sullivan, Matthew Strange, Paul Gross, Steve Karass, John Forsberg, John Sanders and Bob Slocum. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Trade double-cross: House Democrats go protectionist.
- Dan Henninger: No matter how low George Bush falls, terror remains the No. 1. issue.
- Arnie Cooper: A French museum pays homage to tobacco.
