SHORTLY after the identity of the would-be shoe-bomber of the Paris-to-Miami flight was revealed, a British newspaper traced and interviewed his father. Speaking of his son, Richard Reid, Mr. Reid Sr. said, “He’s not a bad lad. I can’t imagine him doing anything like this without being involved with somebody else.”
Not a bad lad! One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. Here’s a young man who in his early youth devotes himself to attacking and robbing people in the street (the kind of crime that in our brave new Britain is invariably described as “petty,” though it means that no elderly person in the land feels safe ever to walk in the streets), and then gives up only to devote himself to murdering 197 strangers at random: yet he’s not a bad lad.
Comments