WELCOME TO THE CLUB, FELLAS - AT 10:53 A.M. ET:  Remarkably, both The New York Times and the Washington Post, the pillars of journalistic liberalism, have major stories this morning on the danger of homegrown Muslim terrorism in the U.S.  Congratulations, guys.  What took you so long?  From the Times's story:

WASHINGTON — As the years passed after Sept. 11, 2001, without another major attack on American soil and with no sign of hidden terrorist cells, many counterterrorism specialists reached a comforting conclusion: Muslims in the United States were not very vulnerable to radicalization...

...But with a rash of recent cases in which Americans have been accused of being drawn into terrorist scheming, the rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., last month and now the alarming account of five young Virginia men who went to Pakistan and are suspected of seeking jihad, the notion that the United States has some immunity against homegrown terrorists is coming under new scrutiny.

That's a relief.  But you can be sure that some, including members of our own Justice Department, will stick with the old dinner-party narrative - no threat, no threat, just friends and neighbors. But there's been a disturbing series of incidents:

There were the November shootings that took 13 lives at Fort Hood, with murder charges pending against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim and an Army psychiatrist.

There was the arrest of Najibullah Zazi, born in Afghanistan but the seeming model of the striving immigrant as a popular coffee vendor in Manhattan, accused of going to Pakistan for explosives training with the intention of attacking in the United States.

There was David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American living in Chicago, accused of helping plan the killings in Mumbai, India, last year and of plotting attacks in Denmark.

There was Bryant Neal Vinas, a Muslim convert from Long Island who participated in a rocket attack on American troops in Afghanistan and used his knowledge of commuter trains in New York to advise Al Qaeda about potential targets.

And others are listed.

There's no silver lining, but maybe a bit of one:

Yet amid the concern about the five Virginia men and the impact of the wars on Muslim opinion, Audrey Kurth Cronin of the National War College in Washington said she found something to take comfort in.

“To me, the most interesting thing about the five guys is that it was their parents that went immediately to the F.B.I.,” she said. “It was members of the American Muslim community that put a stop to whatever those men may have been planning.”

Oh, no, no.  It was the Pakistani government, joined by our FBI, that put a stop to that.  Even at the National War College we see political correctness.  But, true, the parents did go to the FBI, and that is a good sign.  Trouble is, it's one of the rare good signs.  We may not be that lucky next time.

December 12, 2009