The Obligatory Terrorism Post

It's time to face facts. There has been a spate of terrorism going on these last few months. Aside from the usual fluff of bumbling would-be jihadis looking for Al-Qaeda and finding FBI agents instead, we have had five Americans seeking to join an overseas group, an Afghan overseas plot to , Nidal Hassan shooting up Ft. Hood, and now Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab trying to blow up the TSA plane. This is getting to be more than a coincidence; we have a pattern here.

So it is fair to ask, does this have anything to do with Barrack Obama being President. My answer would have to be yes -- but not in the way some people think. I do not think this is fulfilling Joe Biden's prediction that Al-Qaeda would test a new president. Nor is it because he just hasn't been torturing enough people (there is no evidence that anyone we now have in custody would know anything about this recent spate of plots) or because we haven't been monitoring enough overseas phone calls (Hassan's e-mails with the radical Yemeni cleric were monitored, but didn't seem dangerous). It isn't because Obama hasn't started enough wars, or because Muslims saw his promise to close GTMO as a sign of weakness to be exploited. And it certainly isn't because he just hasn't been sounding off belligerently enough, as some Republicans seem to be implying. (Seriously, does anyone believe that if Obama would just use the word "war" more often, terrorist attacks would stop?)

So what is going on here? Quite simply, the actions we are seeing by terrorists are somewhat the counterpart of progressive rage at the absence of public option in the healthcare bill. People who once believed that their quarrel was with the Bush Administration rather than the United States pinned their hopes on Obama. Now that those hopes have been disappointed, they are responding with rage.