Thank goodness for blissfully incompetent Canadian terrorists
Just how stupid are Canadian terrorists?
Imagine you’re one of them, just for a minute. You’re squirreled away in your lair, making nefarious plans. They involve explosives, so it’s a good thing that you’ve got some coming.
You hear a truck rumble into the driveway. The front doorbell chimes.
“Honey, could you get that?” you yell. “I think it’s the explosives delivery!”
———
I was thinking about how absurd it is to order in your explosives, and how bizarre it is that they were delivered by the RCMP, and I decided to get the story straight. I typed incompetent Canadian terrorists into Google and got the goods.
They had a “training camp” in [tag]Washago[/tag], which is north of Orillia. The Washago web site describes the town as a “picturesque village” that is “rich with history and local talent and offers quaint gift shops and a quality clothing store”, where, presumably, a budding young terrorist can shop after a hard days work of…paintball.
Star columnist Thomas Walkom describes what what happened when they showed up there:
[T]heir activities — shooting off firearms and playing paintball — were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police. […] [The men] apparently didn’t realize, or perhaps didn’t care, that large groups of brown-skinned urbanites dressed in camouflage are not a common sight in rural central Ontario.
So when local resident Mike Côté came upon a group of just such men near his Ramara Township farm last December, he immediately informed police.
As he told the Star this week, the group appeared cold, wet and bedraggled. Some had fallen though the thin ice into a marsh. The leader of these alleged terrorists was so disgusted with his young charges that he complained to Côté about their incompetence.
In T.O. Terror Cell’s Disorganized Crime, Maisonneuve’s Phillippe Gohier points out news items “that suggest that the threat may have been unfairly amplified”, like Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:
How dangerous is crazy talk? When does crazy talk cross the line into incitement, and to what extent is that a crime? At what point does a gang of hotheads morph into a terrorist cell, and revenge fantasies into a plot? When does the plot become credible? Are we dealing with terrorist masterminds, or are they just a bunch of stupid goofs?
Stupid goofs shouldn’t be taken too lightly, of course. One need only look south to see the harm that electing one can cause. I’m glad these fools were arrested before they hurt somebody, probably by accidentally blowing themselves up.
But I’m more glad that these wannabe jihadists share that same blissful Canadian incompetence we look for in our government. After the Air India trial debacle, where our justice system firmly established itself in the tradition of Inspector Clouseau, it’s a real relief.
[tags]terrorism, Toronto terror cell[/tags]
June 9th, 2006 at 11:25 am
What struck me about the whole terrorist cell thing was how ambitious their alleged plans were: attacking the Peace Tower, CSIS and RCMP headquarters, beheading the Prime Minister, and so forth. It sounds more like a wish list than actual plans. (Perhaps it is over-zealous reporting on behalf of the media. i really don’t know.)
I’m glad that this group didn’t get off the ground; although they are bumbling, there’s no need to give them time to organize. Still, they come off as a bunch of wanna-be extremist hosers than actual terrorists.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
US member of Congress John Hostettler, chairman of the House of Representatives subcommittee on immigration and border security, had some harsh words for Canada’s handling of national security, claiming that Canada “hosts an abundance of terrorists and as many as 50 terrorist organizations”, criticizing Harper for “laughing off” the threat of beheading when he said he can “live with all these threats as long as they’re not from my caucus”, and recommending that Canada stop accepting immigrants and refugees.
Someone ought to tell Hofstettler that if he wants us to take terrorism seriously, making a fool out of himself is counter-productive. Unless, of course, he has classified knowledge of a secret Islamic terror cell living at the bottom of Lake Ontario. South Toronto, indeed.
June 10th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Obviously amateurs can be dangerous; school shootings are proof of that. However, there’s no real “terrorist” threat from paintball-playing morons like these. Show me a cell that fought in Afghanistan for ten years and I’ll get the shivers.