What’s the difference?
See the point?
Where in the definition of terrorism does it say one must be well-staffed, organized, equipped or tied to a group?
There are plenty of lone wolf terrorists out there who act alone. The Boston Marathon bombers come to mind, or the shoe bomber guy, or UNABOM.
I’m really surprised that people seem eager to make excuses and distinctions even when confronted with the hypocrisy. What is so awful about calling the Planned Parenthood shooter a terrorist?
When you cited “Die Hard,” I knew you were joking about making a credible definition of terrorism.
You were joking, right?
He committed an act of violence for political reasons. Terrorist. It’s very useful to call him that because it puts our anti-terrorism policies in proper perspective.
Ok, since you’re going to repeat your claim that there’s evidence that Dear is a radical please produce evidence that he’s a Christian or is the “no more baby parts” the best that you’ve got?
He is a terrorist, but from a policy perspective there’s a difference between lone wolf terrorism and organizational terrorism. The lone wolf can only be dealt with by the criminal justice system and good policing. Organizations require a military, economic, and political response. That’s the distinction, not whether or not he was a terrorist. McVeigh was also a terrorist, but once he and his partner were apprehended, that particular terror threat was brought to an end.
And it’s fair to make that distinction – once you call him a terrorist. Desperately avoiding the label helps nothing.
Only from those particular people. Not in general. There may be man policies we may need to look at to prevent future ones. And thanks for noting McVeigh; almost forgot about him.
I’m not sure what policies you can implement. Stopping mass shooters is like stopping rapists. If the Kochs had some kind of network recruiting crazy people to go out and kill then we’d have something we could deal with.
Well I take that back, one thing that can be done is to harm the cause of the terrorist so that future would be terrorists realize that their actions can set their cause back. The Republicans should stop efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, not because the Republicans are now champions of reproductive choice, but because that’s how you deal with terrorism.
Wouldn’t the next terrorist just say “I think Planned Parenthood should be, uh, funded,” thus prompting legislators to defund it?
Picture of his cabin in N.C. Note the cross on the wall.
Really, we know this? What if he’s just psychotic and he thinks God told him to extract vengeance on the baby killers?
And this is where the thread is NOT hijacked by a gun control discussion.
Except I have to note this hilarious incident:
NRA-Backed Legislator: We Can’t Take Syrian Refugees Because It’s Too Easy For Them To Buy Guns
So he’s a psychotic terrorist.
Sincerely, thank you for providing the evidence. I’ve also come across as far more hostile than I should and for that you have my sincere apologies.
Obviously, whether or not his religious beliefs were what motivated this, we’ll probably not know for sure, just as obviously not every Muslim who engages in terrorism does so due to their religious beliefs(I.E. members of the PKK and Black September) but this shows he was at least nominally Christian.
I suspect over the next few weeks and months we’ll hear lots of conflicting accounts of why he did it and he will give many different ones.
I think, and admittedly this is somewhat speculative, that yes one could classify him as a “right-wing terrorist” at the very least, just as one could call Nidal Hassan “a Jihadi”.
However, I would still maintain that both Hassan and Dear have for more in common with the depressingly common parade of mass shooters we see to get in America, whether it’s the guy from Oregon, Virginia Tech, etc. than they do with the ISIS guys who shot up Paris, the Baader Meinhoffs, the IRA, the PKK, or a hundred others.
Real terrorists after all generally work in groups, tend to be somewhat well-trained, show extreme patience and discipline, taking months and in some cases years to finally strike and do so in vastly more deadly ways.
So yes, Lance is certainly correct that the term “terrorist” fits, but can’t we all readily admit that Dear, Hassan, and Haq have far more in common with Elliot Rodger than with Muhammad Atta?
Well, yes – that’s the thing, there’s different subsets of terrorist just as there are different subsets of murderer. Phil Spector is not Jeffrey Dahmer but he still belongs in prison.
IIRC in the aftermath of Nidal Hassan’s crime, there was a lot of public pressure to officially declare him a Jihadi Terrorist, and to declare his actions terrorism and not workplace violence, partly out of the “othering” urge and the recurring general nonsense about why-won’t-POTUS-say-the-words-“Islamic Terrorism” , but also partly as a way to enable his victims to be reclassifed as casualties-in-action, as opposed to mere crime victims. This however seems to also translate into civil society so that somehow being victims of terror is attributed a higher horror (and a higher honor) than being victims of vulgar crime. Gee, I’m just as dead, y’know.
Cut that out.
I did not claim Dear was a radical Christian, or that there is evidence he is, no matter how many times you claim I did.
I was willing to believe you really thought I did, but I don’t now, since you are ignoring my earlier post, as well as the New York Times. Do you really think 9th grade Debate Club tactics are going to work?
So just cut that out.
Ok, cut it out.
I did not make that claim, no matter how often and erroneously you claim I did.
Engage honestly or not at all.
Oh, and here; his ex-wife, who certainly doesn’t seem out to trash him, recalls Dear was raised a Baptist, and believed wholeheartedly in the Bible, although he wasn’t “fixated” on it. So, a woman who knew him for 16 years and was speaking generally favorably about him - despite a history that might have provided her reason not to - stated that he was religious. Irrefutable evidence? Maybe not. Evidence? Yes.
Since the 9/11 attacks, right wing extremists have killed more than twice as many people in the U.S. than Muslim extremists.
Not these morons again. One, they have omitted the deadliest attack since 9/11: the Beltway Snipers, who killed 17 people as part of a plan to fund training Islamic terrorists. Two, there are literally ten times more Republicans than Muslims in the country. That they are responsible for an equal number of deaths despite one outnumbering the other 10:1 should tell you who the real problem is.
Cite?
That would be schizophrenia, and I believe onset is much earlier; Dear maintained a relatively normal relationship for 16 years, so he must have been at least 32 at the end, too late, I think, for onset. No cites, sorry, if you’re really interested I can look …
According to whom? Please provide an authoritative source for your definition of “real” terrorist, as that would directly disprove the OP premise.