Now on Main Street: Islamic terrorism is decentralized, domestic, and in your backyard. We note that this week’s Newsweek and cover article about the May 1 attempt hit the stands with a date of May 17. That’s a long time. Did the first news of the Times Square attempt misfire or even fall flat with much of the establishment media and with many Americans?
True, no one was hurt. Mainly because the bomber–Faisal Shazad, a Westernized Pakistani–is young and apparently a world-class screw-up. And the press may have unevenly or half-heartedly covered it simply because we have all been consumed with so much happening at once: the residuals of health policy debate, the Goldman Sachs hearings, and the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But Shahzad is also a U.S. citizen. What does that mean for our future in America and day to day lives? Are we in a new mass denial about what was precisely everyone’s fear after 9-11? In an interview with Reuters last week, Eric O’Neill, chairman of The Georgetown Group, and in the news in mid-1991 for his role in taking down spy and FBI agent Robert Hansen, came closer than anyone to both defining the problem and what’s needed.