Times Square Bomber Anything but Remorseful

It's interesting that self-admitted terrorist Faisal Shahzad, the apparent Times Square car bomber, was thrilled to tell the story of his antics in court. In fact, he was so thrilled that he brought a prepared statement. Due to good taste, U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum told him he could not read it. I thought that was terrific. Shahzad was obviously very proud of himself and un-apologetic.

Tom Hayes and Larry Nuemeister posted an article about Shahzad titled "Times Square car bomber details his chilling plot."

The key points in this story are easy to follow. Faisal Shahzad was an American for only three months. He was married with two children. He was trained to be a financial analyst in our country. He went to Pakistan and, while there, his parents obtained money for his attempt at creating the car bomb explosion. He received $12,000. It is unclear if he received any actual training with explosives.

The bomb he set was not a good one. Of course, Shahzad said in court that no one helped him. He was proud to plead guilty. Hays and Neumeister quote Shahzad as saying: "I want to plead guilty, and I am going to plead guilty 100 times over." He said that, as long as the United States is in Muslim territory, Muslims are going to try to attack us.

The title of our reference article uses the word "chilling" in the title, and it is chilling. These terrorists play by a set of rules Americans don't understand. They know they cannot confront the United States in a regular war, but they know they can cause trouble by employing idealistic people to attack us.

Am I suggesting that we go around with the paranoid feeling that every foreigner is a terrorist? No. But neither should we be walking around thinking there is not any type of action to be taken against us just because we want to believe that everyone is a good person. There are people who do not like our country.

What should we do?

The right concept is Homeland Security. We need to make it work. It will always be a work-in-progress, but all quality defenses are that.

References:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100622/ap_on_re_us/us_times_square_car_bomb