Police in Britain said Saturday that they had arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with Friday’s explosion aboard a London subway train that injured 30 people.
Police say the man was arrested by Kent police in the port area of Dover on the English Channel.
Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner Neil Basu said it was a “significant arrest”. He said the investigation was ongoing and the terror threat level remained at “critical”.
Some people will say, “We shouldn’t be fighting terrorists. We should be trying to understand why they do what they do. Especially when it’s an 18-year-old.”
I’m all for understanding terrorism — and fighting it.
But if we investigate the reasons why an 18-year-old would try to blow up a subway train in London, we might find answers the people seeking “understanding” do not wish to hear.
By definition, such a person believes the use of force is justified in getting across ideas. Instead of writing books, posting a blog, forming a peaceful movement, or other such things, he believed he had every right, if not an obligation, to lash out with violence. Rather than using reason to get his points across, he chose fear and death, like any killer.
It’s very possible we’ll learn this young person has sympathies with Islam. If he’s like virtually every other terrorist of recent years, he will have connections to ISIS or something similar. If so, it probably means that he has a hatred of the culture in which he grew up. He therefore likes Islam because, more than any other culture, it epitomizes the opposite of all things Western, democratic, individualistic, capitalistic, technological and secular. Because he hates these things — I will speculate — he finds ISIS or something similar an ideal way of expressing that rage at his culture and the people around him.
Advocates of trying to “understand” terrorism rather than combating it will then say, “You see? The problem is all this capitalism, Westernism, individualism and technology. Those things are evil and bad, or at least deserving of being curbed.” As if places like Great Britain have not curbed capitalism and Westernism quite a bit already! Countries like Britain are oozing socialized medicine, government control of the economy and increasing restraints on freedom of speech and private property as they cave in to political correctness, particularly in favor of Islam.
I don’t know the facts about this specific terrorist yet. But I know these are plausible things to expect. And I know we’re setting the stage for more such terrorism by making excuses for this one. I can hear the excuses already. We heard them for eight years from President Obama. “The West brings this on itself.” No it doesn’t. People who believe in the use of violence to express their rage bring this on us. We are the victims — not the victimizers.
President Trump says we have to double down on our efforts to be vigilant, with immigration, law enforcement, military action against ISIS and other issues, to keep terrorists out of the country. He’s right. But we also need to double down on the blame-ourselves-first, blame-the-victim mentality that we’ve allowed to take hold, particularly when it comes to anything related to Islam or terrorism. That’s even truer in Great Britain and Europe than America. Why do you think they’re losing so badly?
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