The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘domestic terrorism’

Today a domestic terrorist flew his light aircraft into a seven story office building in Austin Texas that housed a tax office for the Internal Revenue Service. Our government officials expressed great relief that the attack was not carried out by Al Qaeda or some other foreign terrorist group and was therefore deemed not to be a terrorist act.

While they are correct in that the attack was not carried out by Al Qaeda the initial public statements were incorrect in not identifying the act as terrorism. The attack upon the IRS was carried out by something much worse, a domestic terrorist. The pilot of the aircraft had apparently earlier torched his house in an Austin subdivision and left behind a suicide note saying that he was mad as hell at his tax bill, and the national health care stalemate, and the bailout helping corporations rather than people. He opposed the federal government and our laws and flew an airplane into a federal occupied building housing an IRS tax unit to express his extreme anger at the United States government. If that’s not an act of domestic terrorism, then what is?

It is actually foolish and wrong for government officials and media talking heads to breathe a sigh of relief because the pilot was not a member of Al Qaeda. The fact that he is one of ours, a homegrown terrorist, is far worse. Consider the actions of homegrown terrorists at Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and now a government occupied office building in Austin, Texas. Then consider how many millions of Americans own guns, are former military members trained in explosives and warfare, are fed up with the way our government is currently working, resent the bailout of wealthy bankers and corporate executives at the expense of the tax payer, and who are mad as hell about it all and near some kind of breaking point.

It is a sad state of affairs when government officials who are charged with protecting United States citizens from terrorist acts won’t even call an act by a homegrown terrorist, such as flying an aircraft into an office building, an act of terror. Perhaps their tune will change as more facts are known. Then an over reaction will probably occur. We may not be too far removed from being required to get a government permit to travel beyond our front yards.

The fact is that the risk of domestic terrorism is far greater than that of Al Qaeda being able to launch another terrorist attack on United States soil. An additional risk, as the government attempts to prevent further acts of domestic terror, even though the government will not publicly acknowledge domestic terrorist attacks as terrorist attacks, is that individual freedoms are further eroded due to a police state mentality of surveillance and regulation.

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