While taking the hound on patrol this morning, I caught a couple items on NPR which bugged me more than usual. The first was a story about some men being prosecuted for having ties to a terrorist organization or network. They’re Muslim. The details aren’t that important. What bothered me was the long jag the defense lawyer went on about how this would never have happened were it not for the 9/11 attacks. It was the closing statement in the story and the way the thing was edited it seemed like the reporter considered this the most damning accusation.
Well, of course that’s true! The US government didn’t spend a lot of time scrutinizing domestic groups and their ties to foreign terrorism before 9/11. That’s the whole point of this “war on terrorism” thing. Now, these guys might be innocent, they might not. That’s why they’re on trial. But how it can be considered a blanket defense to say “this wouldn’t have happened if terrorists hadn’t blown up the World Trade Center etc” is beyond me.