No terrorism here, nope, just us Republicans

ETA: There's a good analysis of a similar topic at City of Ladies from a few weeks back.

A lot changed on September 11, 2001. It is, I think, fair to wonder, in the idle speculation sense, whether the world would be a different place if the President of the US had been a different person, but that's not where I'm going today.

After 9/11, Bush and his handlers walked a very strange line, twisting in and out of the truth like a...well, like a very twisty thing.

They had two competing goals, and meeting them both meant a balancing act. Goal one was to keep America well-terrified: cue the Department of Homeland Security and their endless threat-level colour code porn. "What goes with orange? Why couldn't they pick something a little easier to coordinate with?" I don't know who said that, but someone ought to have.

Anyway, goal two was the seemingly opposite task of making America feel safe - but not too safe. So, he made numerous pronouncements about how there'd been no domestic terrorist incidents since 9/11 - but claimed that they'd been prevented by his sheer devotion to iron-willed security.

Uh-huh.

I invite you to remember the joke about the person walking along the street making strange gestures and shouting randomly. When asked why, the answer is, "To keep the tigers away." When it is pointed out that there aren't any tigers in this area, the person looks satisfied, and carries on performing their random preventatives.

The narrative was, and is to this day, that terrorism is solely an external threat, and that racial profiling is a sensible response to this "threat"; the focus on xenophobic reactions and practices has become a set pattern of the DHS and the various wingnut factions, and has resulted in nonsensical situations, such as the people on the "no-fly" list who are nevertheless able to easily purchase firearms, and the discommodation of and prejudice against innocent legal residents of the US who have the nerve to live there while brown (and I'm not even touching the whole "people can be illegal" meme that's grown out of this, though it's important to remember).

But what if it turned out that the greatest threat to peace and order in the US wasn't external terrorists - there's no credible contention that any foreigner has made a serious attempt to attack the US in the last eight years - but the homegrown kind?

Let's take a moment to find out what terrorism is, shall we? This definition comes from a source with some relevance to the discussion: (From U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d))

(d) Definitions
As used in this section—
(1) the term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than 1 country;
(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;
(3) the term “terrorist group” means any group, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism;

Note definition (2), which allows for the possibility that terrorists might be Americans: "premeditated, politically-motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets..."

What I've been leading up to is this list from the Southern Poverty Law Centre. 75 terrorist incidents, each one planned or perpetrated by Americans against Americans.

And before you start saying, well, hey, that means Bush's random dances and pronouncements were working, note the date split. 40 of the incidents happened in the six years before 9/11; 35 in the eight years since. 16 Americans were killed before 9/11 in these attacks; 11 more have died since. Whee, what a great improvement - instead of 3 Americans a year killed by terrorists domestically, it's dropped all the way to 1.3 per annum. Well, I guess those billions were well-spent, then, huh?

Now, what's the key factor linking all of these plots, attacks and conspiracies together? Can anyone spot it? That's right! They're all right-wing extremists, frequently racist, and in each case, they were trying to achieve political goals through violence and terror attacks against noncombatants. If only we had a handy name for this kind of thing!

That is to say, just about the only people committing terrorist attacks against Americans inside the US these days? They're almost all white. They're right wing. They're anti-immigrant, racist, religious zealots, often homophobes as well.

I eagerly await the response of conservatives to this: I'm sure we'll get some more twisted logic about how everybody but them are really the threat.

But the face of terrorism in America doesn't have brown skin, and it doesn't speak Arabic, and it isn't a Muslim face. By far the majority of attacks are plotted and/or carried out by straight white Christian men.

So tell me...who should we be profiling again?