They Always Blame America First

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

April 24, 2013

Today I'm off to Orlando, for the Future of Media Summit and Heritage Resource Bank. Campaign Spot posting will be light in the coming days.

They Always Blame America First

Jeanne Kirkpatrick had it right.

In Tuesday's New York Times, Marcelo Suarez Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco, the dean and a professor, respectively, at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, wrote an op-ed entitled, "Immigrant Kids, Adrift." It began:

The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.

Really? Really? These guys blow up a marathon and shoot a cop in the back of the head, and we have to look at ourselves to see where we failed? Where we're not adequate?

(By the way, after this piece appeared, the Boston Globe is reporting Little Brother Bomber* confessed, so we can drop the "alleged.")

You'll be seeing this theme of the brothers as troubled immigrants, struggling to build a better life and failing to find acceptance in a cold-hearted, xenophobic American society a lot in the coming days. As one of my Twitter followers said, this is what happens when you're absolutely determined to avert your eyes from a politically or culturally inconvenient conclusion -- i.e., young Muslim men can be easy pickings for a radical imam who offers them a vision of themselves as noble warriors, earning vast celestial harems in the afterlife for struggling to defeat the evil infidel oppressor, offering them a channel for their anger that he assures them is morally just. After a while, you begin speculating about the bombing being prompted by boxing-related concussions, which, of course, would help explain why so many retired NFL players go on to become members of al-Qaeda.

(Oh, look, Time's doing it, too.)

The initial biographical sketch of the bomber in the New York Times featured the headline, "Far From War-Torn Homeland, Trying to Fit In." The only thing these guys were trying to fit in that week was more nails inside the pressure cooker. (After considerable ridicule, the headline and top photo were changed.)

William Jacobson assembles more examples over at Legal Insurrection, including a Slate writer calling for "an emotionally fraught conversation, a careful reckoning of the particular variety of welcome we offer to children from abroad" and the usual suspects on MSNBC going on about "demonizing the other."

Hey, doesn't blowing up a marathon crowd count as demonizing the other? Could you spare some time to point out that the bombers' refusal to grant us the right to walk the streets without being shredded to a pulp by incendiary-propelled shrapnel is pretty darn intolerant, too?

Now, let's return to the argument put forth by the dean and the professor.

Do they realize that by drawing a connection between the Boston bombers and "immigrants who arrive in the United States as children and teenagers," they're suggesting that every one of those kids is a potential terrorist, if they have a life experience like the bomber brothers? Even the most vehement opponent of the DREAM Act wouldn't make that claim.

The inanity of it all prompted me to throw a bit of a fit on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

The quasi-sympathetic "bomber brothers struggled with new identities in America" feature pieces are doing no favors for immigration reform. The notion that these two are somehow representative of some universal immigrant struggle to adapt to American life is weapons-grade horse[puckey]. Millions upon millions of immigrants made new lives for themselves in this country without feeling the need to bomb the Boston Marathon. If you think adaptation to American culture might cause you sufficient stress to make you commit mass murder, please leave immediately.

By the way, this society was pretty damn kind to these two. The terror-financing blog "MoneyJihad" assembles what we know of the brothers' finances -- and it includes a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge in 2011 and public assistance for the family.

Peggy Noonan points out that either they weren't struggling . . . or somebody out there was sending them money:

The past few days I've looked through news reports searching in vain for one item: how did the brothers get their money? Did they ever have jobs? Who or what supported them? They had cellphones, computers, stylish clothes, sunglasses, gym equipment and gym membership, enough money to go out to dinner and have parties. They had an arsenal of guns and money to make bombs. The elder brother, Tamerlan, 26, had no discernible record of employment and yet was able to visit Russia for six months in 2012. The FBI investigated him. How did they think he was paying for it? The younger brother, Dzhokhar, was a college student, but no word on how he came up with spending money. The father doesn't seem to have had anything—he is said to have sometimes fixed cars on the street when he lived in Cambridge, for $10 an hour cash. The mother gave facials at home. Anyway, the money lines. Where did it come from?

Acknowledging that young Muslim men could be particularly vulnerable to the demonic cajoling and propaganda of a radical imam would force too many people in too many high places to rethink their entire worldview. So we'll be hearing a lot about how concussions and the mean, nasty, xenophobic culture of . . . Cambridge, Massachusetts can turn an otherwise happy immigrant success story into a child murderer.

*(I use phrases like "the Tucson shooter" or "Little Brother Bomber" because I suspect some who commit massacres do so to ensure the world will remember their name. Thus, I try to avoid using their names. Someone said shortly after the marathon bombing, "the perpetrators' names should be forgotten by history." And my brother noted, "The spelling will pretty much take care of that.")

Oh, Sure, Now He Supports the Death Penalty

Some of the smartest and most wise people I know are staunch, principled opponents of the death penalty, so I try not to poke at this sore spot with them. But I think a lot of folks who loudly proclaim how much they oppose the death penalty really just mean that they oppose the death penalty for crimes that don't affect them. Once a heinous crime hits home, they can crave an eye for an eye with the best and worst of us.

I suppose I shouldn't needle these folks too much; they're shifting toward my position -- if you commit cold-blooded murder, and a jury finds you guilty after a fair trial, the rest of us have the right to punch your ticket. But sudden about-faces leave you wondering if a person's previous staunch opposition to the ultimate penalty merely reflected a perspective that was too detached, too clinical, too intellectual and theoretical to grasp why some victims' families want to see a murderer's life end.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino, suddenly a supporter of the death penalty:

BOSTON (CBS) – When the clock read 2:50 p.m. Monday, for some it was an undeniable flashback.

For others it was silence, peaceful silence.

And after the moment of silence, Mayor Tom Menino, in an uncharacteristic turn, called for the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

"I have never supported the death penalty but I will say in this one I might think it's time this individual serves his time with the death penalty," Menino said.

The statement came after Menino sat with a crowd in little Martin Richard's neighborhood, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren, saluting the lives lost one week later.

"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."

GOP House Panels' Report on Benghazi: Hillary Lied

Hillary Clinton is a potential juggernaut in the 2016 presidential race, as long as you avert your eyes from her lying to Congress:

In an interim progress report on the September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, five House committees call former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high-ranking State Department officials responsible for reducing security levels at the consulate, contradicting the testimony Clinton gave before Congress.

The interim report -- released by Republicans on the House Armed Services, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform Committees -- reaches three major conclusions.

First, the committees' Republicans conclude that Clinton approved security reductions at the consulate, pointing to evidence such as an April 2012 State Department cable bearing her signature. The cable was a formal request from then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz for more security. In her testimony before Congress in January, Clinton said, "With specific security requests they didn't come to me. I had no knowledge of them."

The interim report also charges that White House and senior State Department officials attempted to protect the State Department from criticism by altering accurate talking points drafted by the intelligence community. For instance, the report says that, after a Sept. 15, 2012 meeting, administration officials removed references to the likely participation of Islamic extremists.

The report also contradicts administration claims that the talking points were changed to protect classified information. None of the email exchanges reviewed ever mentioned a concern about classified information, according to the report.

ADDENDUM: Ah, the "Matrix" trilogy: an excellent first movie, a wildly uneven second one, and a concluding movie that might as well have consisted of two hours of the Wachowski Brothers -- er, now the Wachowski Siblings -- laughing at the audience and teasing them, "nyah, nyah, we don't have much of an ending thought out, all of the events of this movie contradict what happened before, and we just don't care, as all of your tickets are non-refundable."

Hey, remember how the "Matrix" series, particularly the latter two, emphasized the protagonists standing up against the powerful, soulless corporations?

Well, now the whole Matrix concept, special effects, and Hugo Weaving's perfectly creepy Agent Smith are appearing in commercials for General Electric -- touting how their "smart machines" are an "agent of good" for hospitals.

"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. . . . Inevitably, our creators will sell the rights to use us to some large corporation, even though the whole theme of this movie is that large corporations are soulless and exploitative and bad."

NRO Digest — April 24, 2013

Today on National Review Online . . .

THE EDITORS: The terrorist attack in Boston underlines several failures in our immigration system. What Boston Means for Immigration Policy

JONAH GOLDBERG: The rush to pin violence on the "right-wing" has reached the point of parody. The Right's Undeserved Stigma

AVIK ROY: We must discern the difference between radical Islamists and ordinary Muslim immigrants. Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice

MICHAEL TANNER: Politicians in both parties politicize the Boston bombing. Vultures of Capitol Hill

MICHELLE MALKIN: America's lax asylum policies benefit jihadists, hustlers, and frauds. Insane 'Asylum'

ANDREW STILES: "Deferred action" is a quick and easy path to legalization. Few DREAMers Denied

IMPROMPTUS: Jay Nordlinger on a mindset, Anthony Weiner, Jane Fonda, and more. The dream of 'Islamophobia,' &c.

PATRICK BRENNAN: Controversy over errors in a much-cited paper reminds both sides to remember the capricious nature of the social sciences. A Flawed Landmark

ALLEN WEST: Our enemies take notice when we scale back our military. The Lessons of History

THOMAS SOWELL: We are importing many foreigners who stay foreign, if not hostile. Immigration Gambles

ANDREW STILES: Senator Max Baucus announces his retirement, ending his career on a low note. Baucus Bows Out

YUVAL LEVIN: Senator Mike Lee's Heritage Foundation speech is a model for Republicans. What Conservatives Are For

JIM LACEY: In practice, the QDR is squarely aimed at defending the Pentagon's current direction. The QDR -- Good for Nothing

BENJAMIN ZYCHER: A carbon tax would result in no measurable benefit for the environment. A Payday for the Beltway

EUGENE KONTOROVICH: Mahmoud Abbas's threat to challenge Israeli settlements in court is completely empty. Abbas's Bogus ICC Concession

To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com

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