Terrorists attack, nation yawns

IN THE NEWS
Pretend you're the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper. Please arrange the following stories, all of which were covered on September 11, 2004, in the order of prominence you would give them on the front page of your publication:

1. CBS Defends Its Report On Bush Military Record


2. Bush and Kerry Step Up Attacks in Swing States


3. Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians


4. 14 Governors Receive Mail That's Rigged With Matches


5. Cheney Offers an Explanation of His Comment About Kerry

I'd bet that you'd give #4 some prominence on the front page. Au contraire: while some of these stories made the front page of The New York Times, #4 ended up on page 10.

Without reading the Times article, you might dismiss this issue. After all, if this were really a case of terrorism, and not a relatively harmless prank, the solons at the Times would give it more attention, right?

Judge for yourself, based on this quote from the article:

Aides to several governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, said they had been told by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the case was being treated as one of domestic terrorism, and Jennifer Meith, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Fire Marshal's Office, said that was her understanding as well.

In the opinion of David Neiwert, an expert on right-wing extremist groups, the Aryan Brotherhood is a likely suspect in this case. (The letters had a postmark from a prison where the Brotherhood is known to be organized, and the Aryan Brotherhood web site contained some cryptic messages that may have been related to the attempted attack.)

Americans, including the press, have a blind spot about domestic terrorists. We're more frightented by Richard Reid, the post-9/11 shoe bomber, than the Aryan Brotherhood. One terrorist, however deranged and incompetent he was, changes how airlines screen passengers, so that every traveler now removes his or her shoes while going through security. The other…Gets buried on page 10. Right wing terrorists are definitely worth taking seriously, as evidence by the Oklahoma City bombing. For whatever reason, though, they don't excite the same anxiety as Islamist terrorists, even though there are probably far fewer of the latter than the former currently within the United States.

Personally, I'd rather not fly, hop a train, or ride the bus with members of either al Qaeda or the Aryan Brotherhood. They scare me equally.

Comments

[Bill White]

Paul Krugman had a column some time back - last June I believe - about one William Krar. Here:

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040311-030156-8181r">http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040311-030156-8181r

is a UPI article concerning him. He was discovered with: "An alert citizen contacted the FBI, which led to the arrest of Krar and the discovery of a mind-numbing weapons cache: fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs, nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition and enough pure sodium cyanide 'to kill everyone inside a 30,000 square foot building,' according to federal authorities."

John Ashcroft's DOJ, at least in June, had not mentioned him in 2,295 press releases concerning terrorism.

Another example is the bombing of the Murrow Center in Oklahoma. Between the act and the announcement of the arrest of suspects, noone in the media targeted Americans. They blamed middle eastern terrorists, but nobody speculated about home grown hate groups.

The point is, you are right, and we don't tend to think about our home-grown terrorists.

[Kingdaddy]

Krar should be as much as a household word as Richard Reid. Thanks for the added information.