Take a good, hard look at what's going on here
Jun. 4, 2006. 08:51 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
TORONTO STAR CITY COLUMNIST
Be sickened. Be frightened. Be angry. But don't you dare be shocked.
Unless you've been had.
Either way, the time has long passed for domestic bliss born of ignorance, virtue and wilful denial.
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.
Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, thrice the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to demolish a government building in Oklahoma City. Cellphone detonators. Switches. Computer hard drive. A 9-mm pistol. Soldering gun. Camouflage gear.
And 17 males — born here or reared here, certainly settled here, some of them little more than children — formally remanded yesterday on terrorism-related charges.
If the accusations prove true, this isn't just slumming with jihad. For the benighted who claim that the war on terrorism is terrorism: Here is your war.
Could be, of course, all a wild misunderstanding, colossal police blundering, systemic racism, nothing more sinister than a barbeque in the country.
Could be the thing it appears, though — evidence of an enemy within.
And not just those accused who allegedly plotted to blow things up in southern Ontario — maybe the CN Tower, perchance the baseball stadium; most likely venues of large gathering, because the objective of terrorism, which this may or may not be, isn't merely to slaughter but to bludgeon the living with fear, to silhouette in gore one's utter vulnerability.
These accused wanted, if intelligence experts are correct (and they've been wrong before), to kill you.
Your children, your parents, your lovers, your neighbours.
Wouldn't matter, the colour of your skin, your mother tongue, the God that you pray to or if you pray at all. Wouldn't matter even if you happen to equate George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden.
The Jihad Generation — nothing alleged about it — makes no distinctions.
Come such a day, Toronto will look like London ... Madrid ... Bali ... New York City.
Blood streaming, mangled metal, severed limbs, inchoate rage and immeasurable grief.
"This group posed a real and serious threat," said Mike McDonell, assistant RCMP commissioner in charge of criminal intelligence and national security. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out the attacks. Our investigation and . . . arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the attacks from being carried out."
Further: "We must remain vigilant. Canada is susceptible to criminal terrorist activity as much as any other country."
If such a thing had occurred, if it were still to occur, many would have cheered, if not overtly here in Canada, then without shame in distant places. And others, innumerable others, would turn themselves inside out to rationalize, exculpate, mitigate, mock, shift the blame to something societal or political or self-inflicted.
It takes no sophistication to connect non-existent dots, from Mississauga to Afghanistan, from grievances nurtured in the suburbs of Toronto to a so-called global crusade against Islam, as if the West is responsible for the oppression inflicted upon Muslims, in Muslim nations, by Muslim leaders.
It requires, increasingly, little empirical evidence to excuse the radicalism of pupa militants, including those who enjoy the benefits of our own generous, inclusive and hyper-tolerant society. This is the constituency that protects — tacitly encourages — the nihilism of those driven to violent distraction by what they see as endless victimization of their tribe, a purported world-wide Islamaphobia that can only be redressed by random atrocities.
How quickly, do you think, will these arrests — the judicial process only in its infancy — cease to be about them and become primarily about us?
It's not so difficult to grasp, how the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism has arisen, whether in Canada or Britain or any other democratic society that allows — because it must be allowed; there's no acceptable alternative — the free flow of ideas, the expression of hateful opinions.
An open society is a safe haven for imported bitterness and cosseted otherness, increasingly so among "micro-actors" operating in small, autonomous groups, with only the most cursive ideological alliance to the likes of Al Qaeda, if "inspired" by it.
Vile principles take hold, a certain kind of retributive megalomania, particularly in impressionable minds. And thus is nurtured the view that they are entitled to strike back, as destructively as possible.
In the United Kingdom, as the public discovered recently — following the release of a report on last July's transit system bombings — intelligence agencies prevented three subsequent terrorist attacks.
Last month, a video circulating on the Internet called upon Muslims to attack targets in Denmark, Norway and France, because of the decision taken by some media in those countries to publish offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad.
Historically, there has been hardly any identifiable group that hasn't believed itself ethnically or religiously or politically targeted for what it is.
But modern global jihad is a different animal. It is tearing the world apart. It is picking the fight. It is devouring its own adherents.
It's killing us.
If not in this alleged plot, in Toronto, then by another misbegotten cabal, on another ordinary day, and you know who'll be blamed.
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