Internet Suicide Bombers, Obama Hits New Low, Rush is bin Laden's Disciple

Paul Krugman
Dan Quayle
John Avlon

"A close look at the tea party membership will find many of those independents who went for Obama but now regret it." - Dan Quayle

“I used to get some pretty nasty hate mail from radical Islamists, but the stuff I’m getting right now from right wingers is an order of magnitude worse.” - Charles Johnson

I know that security experts have been saying how much the Internet has influenced people who are susceptible to terrorist ideology. We have some examples in America of two women who trolled Islamic sites for new boyfriends and ended up arrested in Ireland for plotting to kill a cartoonist. It seems comical only because they were caught before the plot could become successful.

More damaging and horrific is the fact that one of the women suicide bombers who attacked in the Moscow metro system is a seventeen year old widow named: "Dzhanet Abdullayeva, she was born in 1992 and lived in the Khasavyurtsky region of Dagestan... "Police said that they had identified an apartment building that had been rented out by two suspected accomplices of the female suicide bombers. They say these two men may have accompanied the woman to a metro station in the southwest of the city where they handed them the bomb belts.


The men are then believed to have gone back to the apartment building, as the female suicide bombers went on to their final destination. It was the men in the apartment building, at a distance, that then detonated the explosives by remote [control]"

Dzhanet met her husband when she was 16 and living in a small village. She had contacted him through the Internet, then married him after they had met in person. Her husband was: "Umalat Magomedov, a high-ranking Dagestani anti-government fighter, who was killed by Russian security forces last year." A few months later she volunteered to wear the suicide belt in Moscow, with devastating effect.

This girl, and the one who volunteered with her, were children, caught up in an ugly, violent, and cruel reality. Just like thug life is made out to be romantic and cool in music videos by poseur musicians, the world of jihad beckons to poor, bored, rural Islamic youth. The romantic fantasies come crashing down when someone you love dies, and you are left to grieve, despair, and angrily call out for justice. Even more unfortunate, there always will be someone willing to take advantage of your fragile emotional state, and voila - a Black Widow is born. Born to cause even more grieving and despair by killing more innocent people, the same way her innocence was lost.

Also unfortunate, is that there are many more like her in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, whose families have met up with CIA mercenaries, or the impersonal firebomb from a drone. President Medvedev channeled his inner Putin by saying that Russia will get tougher on these bombers, but how do you stop their grief or give them a future? How do you heal a person, a village, or a country that has seen such devastation? The Chechens say that if they had their own country they could heal...

The Palestinians are getting ready for the next intifada, claiming that it will be a non-violent one. If a Palestinian state were created right now, about 40-50,000 people would have to be evacuated from the West Bank. Instead of finding ways to sabotage negotiations, the Israeli government needs to do this in exchange for an armistice. This should be the beginning point of any further negotiations, and Israel is loath to do it, certainly will never happen as long as Benjamin Netanyahu and the right wing faction is in charge. After all, the Israelis were given their land, and their terrorists were forgiven, after WW11, and they had the opportunity to heal from the devastation visited on them. Now, its time to do the same for the Palestinian people, give them the same chance and break the cycle that will reverberate throughout the Middle East and throughout the world...

While Obama's approval rating hit a new low in a CBS poll, he also gave an interesting interview with Harry Smith this morning. Here is the link to the full video. During the interview, Harry told Obama that the kindest thing he had heard about him from the right was that he was a Socialist, and the worst that he was Hitler. Obama responded: "Well, I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's pretty apparent, and it's troublesome, but keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out," Obama said in an interview with CBS News that aired this morning. "It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard, that I want what's best for the country."

In an emailed response to Politico, Rush snarkily replied: "I have yet to have a down year at the EIB Network... I and most Americans do not believe President Obama is trying to do what's best for the country," he wrote. "Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power. And I have never known as many people who literally fear for the future of the country."


Rush is on the radio for three hours per day, five days per week, Glen Beck is also on the radio and on Fox News. There are no moderate or liberal equivalents, nobody willing to even go on the record to challenge the mean-spirited, vitriol-laden speech flowing from their mouths. I used to like listening to Rush, back when he had a sense of humor. But since he was addicted to pain medications, he has become more callous and arrogant. He is content to be a negative force in our society instead of a constructive one. Bored folks, depressed from having lost their jobs, senior citizens depressed from growing older and their bodies failing them, listen to Rush and Glenn and can give in to their frustrations and anger for a brief while. But it creates a knee-jerk, emotional response that becomes an all-day attitude, and soon you have some pretty pissed-off people who now listen in to feed their emotional addiction. This is how ex-addicts like Rush and Glenn spread their behavior without taking any responsibility.

I can sit here and laugh at them. I know that they are only trying to dish out the same kind of attitude they felt that George W Bush received, but these nattering nabobs of negativity are creating a dangerous situation. Doctors have been murdered, people are intimidating others by wearing guns openly, and wackos living comic book fantasies are creating militias, willing to die to bring on Armageddon. If it doesn't tone down, as Obama suggests, we will become what Rush describes us as, and I, too, will fear for our nation. Then, Osama bin Laden will have won, his disciples Glenn and Rush can sit at his right, while we tear each other apart in the streets.  Damn, that does sound Apocalyptic...