White Terrorists Have Predictable Behavior, So They Don't Count

Channing Kennedy has a very good post up at RaceWire about the good and the bad about the new National Security Strategy. The good:

There’s a lot improved over the previous version from 2006 (the one that used the word “preemption”), and a lot to praise. The Obama version doesn’t use the phrase the “War on Terror” or “radical Islam,” and it reiterates the administration’s intentions to close Gitmo; it’s not afraid of a “multipolar” world power structure. And it’s not every National Security Strategy that calls to “Promote Dignity by Meeting Basic Needs” via cooperative efforts to eradicate extreme poverty and childhood illness in Africa.

But then Kennedy finds issue with the same thing that strikes me constantly, that the only consistency in declaring something a terrorist act is that the terrorist be brown and have ties to a place not in America.

Brennan then goes on to name seven acts or attempted acts of terrorism from the last year by U.S.-based Muslims with international ties (not all of whom are of Middle-Eastern descent). The deadliest by far is Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood shooting; some of Brennan’s offenders, like Faisal Shahzad, were hoisted on their own poorly constructed petards, and even cooperated with questioners.

In other words, it’s a group united by the presence of extranational ties, not by extraordinary threat. The problem? The absence of any “homegrown” terrorist attacks from the last year by white non-Muslims who actually know how to make bombs.

Explosives expert Robert Joos Jr., the Hutaree family militia, Dr. Tiller's killer, and the still-not-identified guy who bombed a Florida mosque three weeks ago don't count as terrorists in the letter or the spirit of Brennan's directive, despite getting infinitely closer to killing Americans than his frequent flyers.

Until we have some honesty in place and call terrorism what it is, from all sides, then our "War on Terror" or whatever we're calling it these days cannot be seriously considered anything other than a racist holy war against brown-skinned Muslims.

The unfortunate part is that today we seem much more able to tolerate overt nationalist racism (see, e.g., SB1070) than we are to have a discussion about what we mean by terrorism or why the terrorists are motivated to do what they're doing. Actually, interestingly enough, we'll ask that question of the white terrorists - they're dropping planes into IRS buildings because taxes are oppressive! But if you even try to suggest that Islamic terrorists might also have a motivation to do what they're doing (that we're constantly interfering in their sovereignty and blowing their people up, perhaps?), then you're a terrorist sympathizer.

So the lesson here: not only are white, Christian terrorists not terrorists, but only white, Christian terrorists are even human enough that they might have things the US government does that cause them to respond with violence. If you're not white or Christian, there's just nothing we can do - we can't understand your psyche. It must be random, unthinking, brainwashed acts of violence. Yeah, this mentality ain't going away soon.