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I would like to give some credit to America’s yowling Rightist commentariat here. Although their own cultural phobias and America-first jingoism blind them to the actual political motives behind much anti-American militarism, they are nonetheless capable of understanding, albeit in an elementary and misguided way, that those who commit, or attempt to commit, acts of so-called terrorism are motivated by deep personal, religious, political, and ideological convictions. They misidentify these convictions, and their insistence on American purity and non-complicity in the political makeup of the world as we know it is obviously a crippling blindspot. Nonetheless, you will not find our nation’s Michael Savages laboring under the impression that Faisal Shahzad traced a neat, psychological, MFA-workshopped narrative path from bourgeois family man through financial setback through descent into depression and thus onward to Act of Desperation.
As America’s military is killing hundreds of innocent people every week—at least!—in the ordinary course of business, it stands to reason that at some point, somewhere, someone is going to try to kill some Americans in return. The only real surprise is that it happens so rarely. Shahzad was, among other things, wholly incompetent. Any good ol’ boy from Fayette County, PA could do better with a trip to the Tractor Supply Company and one jaunt over the Ohio border to Phantom Fireworks. Regardless, the fact remains. A person doesn’t build a bomb because he’s mopey. He builds it because he’s mad.
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