On May 1, 2010, Pakistani-born, naturalized American citizen Faisal Shahzad drove a green SUV into Times Square, parked it there, and walked away. Inside the SUV were explosives and a jerry-rigged timing device. Fortunately, the bomb didn't go off, and the authorities captured Shahzad just before his plane took off for Dubai.
After his detention, members of the Obama clique immediately put out the misinformation that Shahzad had acted alone. On May 6, The Associated Press reported that law enforcement officials were virtually certain he had been an isolated actor. On May 7, Gen. Petraeus -- who has proved himself to be a lackey to the Obama administration -- told The AP that Shahzad was a "lone wolf" who had been "inspired by militants in Pakistan but didn't have direct contact with them."
Meanwhile, the press leaped on the "lone wolf" meme to suggest that Shahzad wasn't a radical Muslim -- he was a sad little man who had been crushed by the disappointments of capitalism. Diane Sawyer of ABC News described the poor fellow's apartment on May 6: "It's a Spartan existence. A bare kitchen. There were Oreos there. A shelf with the George Clooney movie in it, 'Up in the Air,' and most surprisingly, in a way, professional paints on the table. The FBI took away a painting, apparently, that he may have made, of a mosque ... and a tree." By George, we arrested the Muslim Van Gogh!
CBS's Bob Orr parroted Sawyer's report on Shahzad's humble living conditions and checkered financial background. "Shahzad claims he's angry about U.S. predator attacks on Pakistan," Orr intoned. But Shahzad's word wasn't good enough for Orr -- the real reason for his attempted terrorism, according to Orr, was "financial pressures" which "may have helped his rage. Sources tell CBS News he defaulted on both his mortgage and another $65,000 equity loan." Shahzad "lived a Spartan and seemingly lonely existence."
Why did the media and the Obama administration decide that this man was Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, as opposed to the radical Muslim he so clearly was? Because the media buys into President Obama's worldview -- a worldview which suggests that all crime springs from social circumstance. In order for President Obama to foist his socialist vision on the world, he must suggest that redistributionism solves social ills like crime and terrorism. And indeed, that is exactly what Obama suggests in the introduction to his Bill Ayers-ghostwritten autobiography, "Dreams From My Father." In that work, he decries the "underlying struggle" of humanity -- the struggle "between worlds of plenty and worlds of want." He states badly that kids on the South Side of Chicago are just the same as potential terrorists in Jakarta or Nairobi -- they all suffer from "the desperation and disorder of the powerless," which "twists the lives of children" and leads them to "slip into violence and despair."
In Obama's mind, Islamic terrorism isn't fundamentally Islamic -- it's fundamentally Marxist. It's all about class struggle. On June 4, 2009, Obama told the Muslim world that he felt it was his "responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." His solution to Muslim violence wasn't to set harsh penalties for Muslim violence or force Muslims around the world to denounce such violence -- it was to throw Israel under the bus, unilaterally disarm ourselves of nuclear weapons, and allow Muslim dictatorships to flourish in the name of self-determination. On a more practical level, Obama's solution was to redistribute wealth from America to the Muslim world through a bevy of programs.
This also explains why President Obama constantly feels the urge to apologize to other nations -- all ills spring from America's superpower status. That's why Obama apologizes to the Europeans and then forces American taxpayers to foot a $50 billion bill to bail out the European Union. That's why Obama apologizes to the Muslim world, and then allows Iran to go nuclear and has his lackeys threaten to shoot down Israeli jets if the Israelis take matters into their own hands. America and her allies are the oppressive exploiters, and they must be whittled down to size.
Shahzad, in Obama's view, was an emissary of the underclass, not an emissary of the Pakistani Taliban. Naturally, Obama was proved wrong. But the facts never change Obama's mind. His ideology is set rigidly into place: inequality breeds violence and instability. And only drastic measures can level the playing field.
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