WE WONDER WHY - AT 6:30 P.M. ET:  It's surprising to find this in a mainstream magazine like TIME, but I'm glad they ran it.  It seems 2009 was a frightening year in terms of terror:

You may not have noticed because most of the plots were foiled, but 2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terror "events" on U.S. soil. When analysts tally these events, they refer to anything from a disrupted plot to U.S. citizens traveling abroad to seek terror training or a lone gunman running amok in the U.S. And by the calculations of Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. during 2009 than in any year since 2001.

"There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.," warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terror-related "events" on these shores since 9/11, and that 12 of those occurred in 2009.

To its credit, TIME lists the Fort Hood shooting as a terrorist incident, deviating from the trendy line that the shooter was simply "stressed."

But then we get this:

Terrorism experts and Muslim community leaders caution that the spurt in such events doesn't necessarily add up to a trend. For one thing, the cases are unconnected. "Each case has its own special circumstances," says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Garbage in, garbage out.  Of course they're connected.  They're connected by a common ideology.  Have you ever noticed how these jihadists always seem to use the same language?

The internet is being used widely as a recruiting tool:

Jihadist recruiters have grown increasingly sophisticated in their use of the Internet, and many of them specifically target American audiences. Extremist e-preachers such as Anwar al-Awlaki, an American living in Yemen who exchanged e-mails with Maj. Hasan, communicate in English, which makes them more accessible to American Muslims. Pakistani authorities believe the Virginia Five were recruited by a man known as Saifullah, who communicated mainly through e-mails.

And...

Jenkins suggests there may also be a generational conflict at work: He points out that many of the American Muslims accused of terrorism this year are young men, who "would have been at a very impressionable age when 9/11 happened." Although the majority of the community were repelled by the terrorist attacks on that day, he says, "some would have been inspired by it and caught up in the jihadist narrative."

If 2009 alerted Americans to the domestic terror threat, it's a safe bet that there will be more reminders of the danger in 2010.

COMMENT:  No doubt.  And no doubt we'll get the usual excuses and rationalizations.  But one factor not discussed in the piece, or in the mainstream media generally, is the signal of weakness being sent by the Obama administration.  Jihadists, like any other fighters, sense the power and resolve of the opposition.  And weakness encourages them.   

If you were a jihadist, would you rather face Barack Obama or Dick Cheney? 

Case closed.

December 23, 2009