Understanding the JFK Airport Plot

4 Accused of Plot to Blow Up Facilities at Kennedy Airport - New York Times

Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in New York, said all four men had “fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature,” although they appeared to be acting on their own and had no known connection to Al Qaeda.

Law enforcement officials said that Kennedy, which handles roughly 45 million passengers a year and 1,000 flights a day, was never in imminent danger because the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives.

The airport is fed jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil through a capillary system of pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. Oil industry experts said safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network.

So the terrorist masterminds were not tied to al Qaeda, didn’t have the means to actually do the harm that is claimed (the airport would not explode in any event — the worst that would have happened is a big gas fire and disruption to normal service), and no one was ever in any real danger.

So why did law enforcement officials say this was the "worst thing they could ever possibly imagine?" Are their imaginations so pathetically small? And why did this government chose yesterday to announce these indictments, after an 18 month investigation, and when talk had been so focused on our perpetual involvement in Iraq? Why is the right wing "righteous indignation" machine in a virtual frenzy over this? And more fundamentally, why did these men even want to harm us — and how can we defend ourselves in the future?

On the first questions, the answer is pretty obvious. The timing and hyperbole comes as a distraction, as all US terrorism announcements seem to do, from some really bad news for this administration. The public was forgetting, much to their chagrin, why we have to invade and occupy oil-rich countries again — why this perpetual war on terror is so important to the average American. In reality, we have yet to announce a single law enforcement action against any credible plot in the US. It’s always some cabal of fools with intent but no real means who contact an FBI agent to find out how to blow something up.

Ask yourselves, why is that all we ever see? If there are serious terrorists, ones who can actually do us harm, why don’t we ever see those paraded into court rooms? Is it because we don’t catch them? Or is it because they aren’t here?

Regardless of that answer, it’s definitely important to ask ourselves why anyone in America (citizens or not) would want to do us harm, for no good reason other than their own misplaced anger, ignorance, intolerance, and perhaps even some promised heavenly reward? These four men were apparently angry about US intervention in the world, ignorant of real facts, and hell bent on taking radical Islam up on its offer of eternal bliss for martyrdom. That last part certainly is dangerous, as all it takes is someone with actual skills sending these fools out on a mission.

When it comes down to it, Religion + Stupidity = Violence, regardless of the faith. With loyal, uncritical followers and power-hungry leaders, eventually the people in charge will get their followers to do something we’d call evil. We can choose to address either of those two root causes, or both at once. But religious violence won’t diminish until we do.

In this case, al Qaeda doesn’t hate us "because we’re beautiful." They hate us because of how we challenge their power (for better or worse) around the world. That doesn’t mean we should withdraw from the world, as some suggest. But it does mean we need to be very careful about which fights we pick. The real war is for the respect of the world — and that war, we are losing big time.

More importantly, it’s time we addressed the root causes of this violence — ignorance, poverty, imperialism, and bastardized religion. The conservatives have a point when they say the problem won’t right itself simply because we withdraw from a distant conflict. No. It’s too late for that now, given our past policies and the failure of other nations to say "no" to extremism.

However, it’s also clear that we can’t win anything militarily. If we’re going to fight terrorism, we can only do so by discrediting the tactic, the people who use it, and changing minds about what kind of world we want to have, progressive or regressive, peaceful, or violent. And as long as American fundamentalism rivals that of Islam, don’t expect any improvements that front. Simply put, if we expect the Muslim world to tackle its own fundamentalism, why can’t we do it at home?

The next ten years are critical. If we get our own house in order, fixing religion + stupidity at home, we might just be able to return to the world with some solutions to offer, with the stroke of a pen, the shake of two hands, and not the point of a gun.