Opinion Editorials, November 2010

 The Make-Believe Bomb of Portland, Oregon:

Assembled by the FBI for Another Unnecessary Sting Operation

By Ben Tanosborn

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, November 29, 2010

 
Another “thwarted” terrorist attack by the FBI, this time just eight miles away from where I reside! 
 
It was a make-believe bomb “assembled by the FBI” and scheduled to be detonated by a 19-year-old Somali-born student in, of all places, Portland, Oregon, on Friday, November 26, at the tree lighting ceremony at the city’s Pioneer Courthouse Square.  The US cavalry, this time composed of a mighty conglomerate of government investigative and law enforcement units – FBI, Oregon State Police, Portland Police Bureau, Corvallis Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office – came to the rescue in yet another unnecessary sting operation to entrap an embittered young man, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who no doubt thought himself performing his sacred duty in the jihad against satanic America and its inhumane, materialistic people.  Once again America is showing the world how we, in the United States of America, are capable of harvesting a beautiful half-pound potato from 25 tons of potato-seeds! 
 
Acts of terrorism having their roots – in either intent or purpose – in the Middle East are succeeding in creating fear no matter how few they are in number or their smallness in damage caused.  Can any of us think of other investments, or even lotteries, that will yield the investor/bettor a possible return/prize of 100,000+ to 1?  The confrontation created – although never acknowledged – by the West, headed by the United States, against the sovereignty of the people in that region, is quickly telling us how a few million dollars invested by Osama bin Laden and his supporters is costing the US and the EU, trillions; yes, trillions of dollars in misdirected wealth – to obtain some minimal measure of security – that would be infinitely better spent if used in education and other much-needed infrastructure.  And that doesn’t remotely begin to quantify the additional human cost in people’s mental health, through fear, inconvenience, and the loss of the much-touted democratic right of privacy.
 
Americans simply don’t get it, and the government seems intent that we never do.  The terrorism our government tells us we are fighting… in Iraq, Afghanistan, and just about every place in the world, including America’s home grounds, has a very well-defined tanned faced with a crescent moon in the background.  Oh, we claim that only Muslim extremists are at the firing sight of our rifles, but the nerves within the finger touching the trigger are often in total disaccord with the optical nerves that transmit what’s at the rifle sight.  Our government does not seem to care why these extremists are angry… or the high probability that this terrorist global blaze might have been started by our very own diplomatic and military arson. 
 
Whether we accept it or not, like it or despise it, terrorism is the weapon of last resort for most people who, rightly or wrongly, feel abused and eminently overpowered. In today’s international arena it’s a counterbalance to imperialism and selective bullying, and the only apparent fighting-equalizer for the oppressed.  Terrorism is, and will continue to be, the bullied peoples’ weapon of last resort, as unjust or unfair the final damage turns out to be, or the degree in which innocent people might be maimed or killed.
 
Let’s go back to young Mohamud.  Is it so difficult to conceive the idea that if we put a gun in the hands of someone angry, he is likely to discharge it against the person(s) who have caused such anger?  How many millions in the Middle East, where the US has directly or indirectly been the cause of death and destruction to their families, are terrorism-siblings of Mohamud?  Do we want to dispose of them all, take them away in martyrdom as they cry Allahu Akbar!?  There is no need to waste time and resources in resorting to entrapment.  And, at least on the surface, that’s really what was done by the FBI to this naturalized US citizen: pure and unadulterated entrapment  
 
But terrorism, at the global scale, could still be eradicated if America acts in good faith on the causes which have ignited such rancor and hate in much of the billion-plus Muslim population around the world.  It has been the US’ constant meddling in their internal affairs for more than half a century, coupled with America’s unrelenting siding with do-no-wrong Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that loom as the root-causes of today’s international terrorism.  However, arrogant governments in America, one after another, refuse to acknowledge, or remedy, any such wrong doing… preferring the slow economic bleeding of its population, and its self-inflicted psychological martyrdom.
 
Ben Tanosborn
www.tanosborn.com                  

tanosborn@yahoo.com

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