Canada's Tolerance is No Deterrent to Terrorism
By Jack Kelly
It was unthinkable, like a plot to kill the Care Bear, Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny.
Most liberals here and abroad think Islamic terrorists exist primarily to cause embarrassment to the Bush administration. If a bomb goes off in a marketplace in Baghdad, it's only a reminder of the tragic consequences of Bush's relentless pursuit of oil. If there's a riot at Guantanamo Bay, it's just proof of how wrong it was to establish a prison there in the first place.
And most liberals here and abroad think that if people overseas dislike us, it is our fault.
But Canada -- especially in the minds of Canadians -- is the kindest and gentlest of nations, the very model of global citizenship, with none of the rough edges of its neighbor to the south.
So the weekend's developments came as a shock to many in the Great White North. On Friday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 17 Muslim men and boys and charged them with plotting terror attacks in Canada.
The group had attempted to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, about three times as much as Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had used to bring down the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
The group planned both a truck bomb attack on a public building, and to open fire on a crowd in a public place, RCMP sources told Canada's National Post.
Most of the suspects are Canadian citizens. All are legal residents. They are of various nationalities, but all worshipped at the same mosque.
No nation is more tolerant than Canada. No nation is more multicultural than Canada. Provincial authorities in Ontario have even considered permitting Muslims in the province to be governed by Sharia, rather than Canadian, law. Canadians oppose the war in Iraq. Canadians want the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. So how could Muslims not love Canada, like every one else does?
Could it be that radical Islamists want to kill Canadians simply because Canadians aren't radical Islamists? This a concept which Canadians who once thought they could kibitz the war on terror safely from the bleachers are now having to come to grips with.
"An Associated Press dispatch on the bomb plot noted that Canada, with America, Britain, Spain and Australia, was listed by Osama bin Laden as a 'Christian' nation that should be a target for terrorism," the New York Sun noted in an editorial Monday. "Nothing short of dropping Christianity and converting to Islam will satisfy the Islamic terrorists."
"For everyone who thought Canada could cower in a corner of the planet, unnoticed and unthreatened by evil men -- even when the most menacing of a very bad lot has twice referenced this country as a target for attack -- take a good, hard look at what's been presented and what's being alleged," advised Rose DiManno, a columnist for the Toronto Star.
Many Canadians will take refuge in a river in Egypt, predicts journalist Rachel Marsden:
"So why, people here ask, would anyone want to do damage to Toronto? Maybe they don't. No one has been convicted of anything here yet. Maybe the three tons of ammoniun nitrate fertilizer that the suspects allegedly ordered were going to be used to grow a massive garden that would spell out 'I love Canada' in tulips."
Globe & Mail columnist Christie Blatchford noted that at the press conference announcing the arrests, the authorities were unwilling to use the M word:
"So frequent were the bald reassurances that faith and religion had nothing -- nothing, you understand -- to do with the alleged homegrown terrorist plot...that for a few minutes afterward, I wondered if it was a vile lie of the mainstream press...that the 17 accused young men are all, well, Muslims."
Those who ignore Islamic radicalism or, worse, make excuses for it are setting the state for successful terror attacks in the future, Ms. DiManno said:
"How quickly, do you think, will these arrests...cease to be about them and become primarily about us?"
A lawyer for one of the suspects already is threatening civil lawsuits, Rachel Marsden noted. But the arrests could be a long overdue wakeup call, she said.
"Canada has been the doofus who keeps getting shoved into lockers, but still figures that if he gives up more lunches and bus money, the haranguing will end.
"The new Conservative government...has already denounced Iran and Hamas, deported illegal immigrants and told anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan to shove it."
"There's a new sheriff in town. Will the townspeople back him up?" |
