From CNN:
Authorities later found thousands more rounds of ammunition at the couple's residence, 12 pipe bombs and hundreds of tools that "could be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs," the [San Bernardino Police Chief] said....
Syed Rizwan Farook... was apparently radicalized and in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism, law enforcement officials said Thursday....
Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia for several weeks in 2013 on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take at least once in their lifetime, which didn't raise red flags, said two government officials. It was during this trip that he met Malik, a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a "fiancée visa" and later became a lawful permanent resident.
Officials had previously said that neither Farook and Malik were known to the FBI or on a list of potentially radicalized people.... Farook himself had communicated by phone and via social media with more than one person being investigated for terrorism, law enforcement officials said. A separate U.S. government official said the 28-year-old has "overseas communications and associations."
Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned? And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
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140 comments:
They were obviously thoroughly and robustly vetted in ways that you and I can't imagine. So I have no idea what people are upset about.
Here's the problem. It is very difficult to predict terror. It also takes lots of resources and luck. And the police have to always be right.
Way easier to keep terrorists and potential terrorists out of the US.
Also easier to kill terrorists in the ME.
This war will never end in our life times. Islamists will never quit.
Obama is the worst president to have at a time like this.
He doesn't believe yesterday's terrorist attacks have anything to do with Islam.
He think Dylann Roof's church shooting showed that racism is deep in America's DNA.
If you trust the refugee vetting process of Obama's state department you are insane.
Obama doesn't WANT the immigration service to do anything.
And, no, the "vetting" that the government refuses to explain will not be any better than what allowed his wife to be here and for them to "miss" problems with him.
"Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned? And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik."
Professor, in some ways I think your questions answers itself.
"Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned? And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik. "
excellent point. Even when the FBI is aware that they may pose a threat they often slip through the cracks. But as Rubio pointed out, there is noting to vet with these refugees. Who has the records to compare against? Syria? We can't vet them. But somehow we'll track them? How has that worked out for illegal immigrants? let alone people who may be involved in terrorism.
But of the dems want to keep pushing thousands of Syrian refugees, be my guest.
I seem to remember an organization called the National Security Administration whose task it was to detect the kind of communications that Farook carried on with known terrorist entities, but some dude called Snowden blew a whistle (or was it a B-flat on a trombone?) which caused a lot of silly people to go even more silly, which in turn caused that organization to stop listening in on such harmless titter-tatter. And so the first thing we hear about these naughty Muslims is the BOOM!
In a previous thread ARM said "The unthinking responses to what is a reasonable limitation on gun ownership is why we can't have nice things."
I just want to reiterate my response: for decades Americans could have all kinds of nice things, including nice guns, with very little restriction - in the 1920s you could buy a full-auto Thompson submachine gun at a hardware store - even in the 1960s you could order a rifle to your house via the Sears Roebuck catalog. Now you have to go to a heavily fortified gun shop, usually in a sketchy area of town because zoning boards don't want them in nice areas. Thanks for making us feel dirty for exercising a natural, civil and Constitutional right you lefty jerks.
But thanks to Prohibition, the Great Society, mass immigration of 3rd world people who can't or won't assimilate, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and the War on Drugs we now have a much more fractured, feral and violent populace. So naturally Obama and his army of sock-puppets like ARM want to further disarm law abiding Americans. They want to erase the Second Amendment, and of course will have to gut the fourth and fifth to implement that. As punishment for our White Privilege, I suppose.
Many of us question the efficacy of screening, as well. We are called bigots and Islamophobes.
Clearly we need a law making the possession and use of pipe bombs illegal, or at least require universal background checks before they can be purchased.
Islamic migration is genocide.
How did they manage to buy this many rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion? Is it that easy for anyone to buy such large quantities?
The fact is that terrorism isn't a threat on the local level. It's entertainment. The media love it. Great ratings.
Terrorism, to do serious damage, requires finance, equipment, transportation, planning, and so forth involving lots of people. The more people, the easier to detect.
So long as the number of people needed for serious damage is bigger than the FBI detection size limit, you're good.
A two-person shoot-up is smaller than that, but on the other hand isn't damaging, so we're good.
I think you are asking a lot of the FBI. They can't have 24/7 surveillance on everyone who may have contacted someone under investigation. I assume the FBI had a chance to see the communications and they were fairly innocent.
hundreds of tools that "could be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs
Hundreds of tools?
All it takes to make a pipe bomb is a drill to put a hole in the end-cap for a fuse.
I mean, "pipe bomb". It's made of plumbing pipe and filled with explosive.
It's about the simplest thing in the world to make go boom..
What would we do without expert analysis and layers of editorial oversight?
How did they manage to buy this many rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion? Is it that easy for anyone to buy such large quantities?
Especially since they weren't wealthy by any means.
"Many of us question the efficacy of screening, as well. We are called bigots and Islamophobes."
To my mind, the "Islamophobe" accusation is really a confession of a belief that the government cannot do the screening and security it purports to do. Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness? I think it's a cheap excuse for failure.
There is too much conflicting information.
I heard he traveled back to Saudi Arabia in the spring of this year. That she is on a K1 visa (which becomes a permanent resident card, or green card, after you're married and adjust status).
It could be that they are a married couple who decided to go all jihad together.
But, if she is on a K1 visa, I'm wondering if maybe they weren't really married at all and the child was just a prop.
"Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned? And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik."
Yes, it is to much to expect. With many thousands of Muslims to track, and a government and public sensitive about profiling, it can't be done. If you're not careful, clock boy and the likes of him will slap you with a law suit. And of course, some of us never trust "the government." Silly, I know.
Libtards are convinced that we can vet refugees using Syrian law enforcement databases. Which are controlled by the Assad government. An enemy of America. With a powerful vested interest in getting as many ISIS people as he can the hell OUT of his country.
Libtards have a deep, abiding faith that these databases will actually be useful for screening potential terrorists and terror sympathizers seeking to come to America.
Even though ISIS has stated that this is precisely their aim. And Assad has precisely zero incentive to keep ISIS types from leaving the country.
Libtards. Good lord, these people are stupid.
"Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned? "
Yes, it is too much to expect. They are busy with more important matters.
Remember when we took in a huge wave of immigrants from Italy and we had precisely zero problems with the Mafia after that?
Good times.
Ann Althouse said...
"Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?"
Well, at least you are beginning to ask the right questions. Now, what is this "principle of non-discrimination" you claim we hold?
Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?
This idea that it's somehow wrong or against our values to discriminate is absurd and it's leading us to make some incredibly stupid decisions, from letting crossdressers into girls' locker rooms to letting terrorists walk into the country.
A blanket refusal to discriminate for nondiscriminations sake is asinine. There are all kinds of valid reasons to discriminate, for all kinds of reasons.
It disgusted me to see Obama and Hillary jump to the gun control issue while bodies were still warm. What about Muslim control? No one would ever word it that way, but there are cultural and security components to immigration. Syed Farook was himself an American citizen (his wife was not), but this attack should make us wonder whether we want more men (and women) like him and wife in this country.
Obama and Hillary would rather gripe about a constitutionally protected right. The federal government can actually do something about immigration without trampling the rights of American citizens.
Who knew 20 years ago that it would be Islamic terrorists that usher in the police state the left requires. I always assumed it would be lefties making sure that no person made a dollar more than his neighbor by working a little harder. It takes a *lot* of secret police to make sure that no underground economy ever appears.
The real problem in a democratic system is that the government cannot appear too weak to protect its citizens because, you know, elections. And we all know how stupid the lumpenproles are.
'...that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?'
I don't have an answer for that, but I believe that the balancing of those ideals are routinely debated in and out of government. In this case, the information already released about these two makes me speculate that the authorities were being very cautious in the collection and/or application of intelligence data.
The House blocked a bill from debate that would prohibit those on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns. Why do we expect the government to be better at stopping those who wish to commit an act of terrorism? If we're so concerned about potential terrorist's civil liberties regarding guns, why should we expect better screening of potential terrorists? Wouldn't that also violate their civil liberties. Ya can't have it both ways.
No one has promised that the vetting process would detect and cull all Islamic radicals.
No one involved in the vetting process will suffer as much as a slight career setback if they let a few Islamic radicals into the country.
I suspect that at least a few Muslims will be involved in the vetting process.
The vetting process is classified. It cannot be reviewed by ordinary Americans, or the press.
The government considers the safety of ordinary Americans a lower priority than admitting a relatively small number of Syrian refugees (there are, what, 6 million of them?).
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin 'Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy?'
'A republic' replied the Doctor 'if you can keep it.'”
Pro-choice (i.e. selective principles) combined with [class] diversity... and anti-native policies (e.g. excessive immigration, illegal immigration, refugee crisis).
...that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness
Those are *your* values, not *ours*.
Mine are Christianity, Family, and Fatherland.
What I like best about yours are that one and three are directly at odds with number two. Not only do I not care for your values, I find them self-destructive.
Kindly keep them to yourself.
NB: France and England did not wring their hands that holding the line in the north of France meant betraying their values of not using poison gas. Tactics are not ideology; retribution is not a war crime, and losing a war to signal one's morality is the most immoral thing one can do to one's own people.
Why would visiting Mecca during the Hajj cause suspicions? Director of our CIA John Brennan has. Besides as Obama has stated, “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”.
We're going to have to search ourselves as a society ... to take basic steps that would make it harder -- not impossible, but harder -- to let individuals get access to pipe.
"Welcome to the party, pal."
-- Officer John McClain as played by Bruce Willis in "Die Hard"
Now explore other areas of the government that you have assumed might work and repent your naivete.
"Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?"
Close the borders, and then fight them "over there". Someone is going to get violated, and better that be foreigners than Americans. Taking right away from all Americans to fight problems created by the Left (and in some cases, their allies in the GOP Establishment) is fundamentally Un-American) has become a horrible pattern.
What does that mean?
- Actually enforce the law. Use barriers and aggressive patrolling on the southern border. Immediately deport anyone caught in the country illegally. Seize airbases in Honduras, El Salvador, whatever if necessary to aid in the repatriation.
- End the war on drugs, and use all those unemployed former DEA agents as border guards.
- Cut back on immigration generally, and cut Muslim immigration to zero. The government has an obligation to not discriminate against Americans (and permanent residents) - that doesn't apply to random folks overseas who want to come here.
- If that terror watch-list is really so useful, then immediately deport every non-citizen on the list. That will cut down on the number of people the FBI has to watch.
"Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?"
Your mistake is an unstated assumption. You (and I) do not want to discriminate against innocents. Once you tell us how we can identify them on sight, we can proceed.
Yes, how can our government discriminate Islamists from Muslims, from not discriminating against all Muslims?
"How did they manage to buy this many rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion? Is it that easy for anyone to buy such large quantities?"
Yes it is easy. A competitive shooter can go through thousands of rounds a month in practice and competition.
Those of us who enjoy recreational shooing have been stocking up lately on the assumption that when Hillary! becomes the official Dem candidate her heated rhetoric will cause price spikes and shortages, like what happened after Sandy Hook.
This one is a weird one.
My theory is they were lone-wolfish jihadis readying themselves for a Paris-style rampage (more likely in Los Angeles than in San Bernardino IMHO) then he got pissed off at his work party and decided on the spur of the moment to do the deed there. Speaks of low discipline.
Regarding ammo sales, http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/07/23/good-question-why-arent-large-ammo-purchases-tracked/
When two or more persons perform a slaughter and the proof that they did do it is available then one should be kept for gleaning information and the others executed on the spot. Would that be a deterrent?
@Ann:To my mind, the "Islamophobe" accusation is really a confession of a belief that the government cannot do the screening and security it purports to do.
Of course ISIS and the nations that sponsor terrorism could start keeping a database of their operatives, and if they grant us access then of course it will be easy to look people up.
Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?
Not one German or Japanese we killed from 1941 - 1945 was given due process under our laws, except the Quirin saboteurs I suppose. For that matter not one person killed by Obama's drones was given due process under our laws.
Your question might as well be "is no sunrise made of leather"? It's a category error.
Fighting terrorism is not a matter for nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness. Fighting crime is a matter for nondiscrimination, freedom and fairness.
This incident is being treated as a crime. Preventing the incident of course is outside the scope of criminal justice system.
If you don't want immigrants given the opportunity, you have to keep them from getting here in the first place, which again, not a matter for "nondiscrimination, freedom and fairness".
"we can vet refugees using Syrian law enforcement databases. Which are controlled by the Assad government.
But if the databases are unreliable, "official" Syrian government documents are even more so, as many government offices were overrun by ISIS. Which gives it the capability of producing "Syrian government" documents on the same forms used by the Syrian government.
Does this incident show the need for better surveillance of 'certain groups'? No.
Does it show the need for better immigration control? No.
Does it indicated anything at all about Islam or Muslims? No.
Does it show the need for more gun control? BINGO!
But then, what doesn't?
It's impossible to tell whether the intelligence restrictions, tepid zeal and general bumbling of the Obama Administration had a direct impact on not stopping this event. Certainly they did not help. Also we know so little about the woman (nothing really) that you can't evaluate whether there were tell tale signs or she was of the type that could just breeze by. So maybe there was something they could have done.
There are wide variations of the number of Muslims in the US--3 to 7 million by the sources I looked at. The majority of those Muslims are not of middle eastern background. East Asia is the largest group followed by American black muslims. Two thirds of all persons of Arab descent in the US are Christian, but most of the Arab immigrants in the last several decades have been Muslim. About two thirds of the Muslims in the US are immigrants or first generation.
In short it's a large and diverse group and many are well assimilated. The man in this attack certainly appeared to be from all externalities. The woman? Who knows?
So it's hard to tell who might be an islamic Terrorist and who might not. A hell of a lot harder when the leaders of your government don't even acknowledge the concept. But even if they did, would it change the short term task?
It's hard to stop these attacks. There's more we can do to stop them, but even after that it's still going to be hard.
Oh, and while we're in the middle of an existential struggle, let's make the Army and Marines less effective by putting women in the military so a few female officers and punch their tickets on the way to becoming general officers. Yippee!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WOMEN_IN_COMBAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-12-03-11-37-07
Despite the various studies, this outcome was inevitable - Obama gets to hurt military efficiency and please radical feminists at the same time.
Obama wants us to rethink the country's position on gun control.
Fair enough.
But only if we do the same with immigration, Mr. President.
Obama sounded very tired in his statement this morning. Very very tired.
I am willing to take the risk of taking some lumps to terrorism if it is in the compelling interests of the United States of America, to which I have pledged allegiance, however, can anybody tell my WHAT THE FUCK Obama, Hillary, and Kerry think we are accomplishing by getting involved, and even instigating a civil war in Syria?
"Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?"
Yes and no. Any duty of nondiscrimination, freedom and fairness we might have to potential immigrants should be decisively outweighed by the duty to protect our current citizens. A sensible nation would be imposing a moratorium on the arrival of immigrants from places where a percentage of them are likely to be our enemies. Rubio has it right that we should exclude such people wholesale until we devise some reliable mechanism to vet the applicants.
It's tougher with citizens and legal residents. Like gun owners they have rights under the Constitution. In times of war we gravitate towards a less restrictive sense of what the Constitution actually restrains. ISIS and IQ have declared war on us, so we should treat it as if we are at war, but our leadership does not.
Mostly we need to improve the surveillance. These two killers were violating the law before they killed anyone. Their plotting (and there had to be others) and their bomb factory were reason enough to arrest them. But you can't if you don't know what they are doing.
Trump is way ahead of the curve on this. Too far for me in some respects. But what will voters prefer? A candidate ahead of this curve? Or behind it? I think that answer is clear.
And by the way Donald's romance of black ministers is a big deal. He only has to chip away a small portion of the black vote to put a big hurt on the Democrats.
Sam: "My theory is they were lone-wolfish jihadis readying themselves for a Paris-style rampage ... then he got pissed off at his work party and decided on the spur of the moment to do the deed there. Speaks of low discipline."
Those impetuous newlyweds, huh?
"There are wide variations of the number of Muslims in the US--3 to 7 million by the sources I looked at."
Meaning variations in the estimates,
This post made me laugh like no other. Imagine any adult thinking this government is competent in any way. Why don't you study the Constitution some more? Maybe you'll see the connection between unlimited power and limited competency.
Why would a terrorist bother to come as a refugee given the 2+ year wait, when they can come as a student or fiancée etc?
And aren't there so many U.S. citizens who are potential terrorists that the extreme focus on refugees is a bit misplaced?
"we can vet refugees using Syrian law enforcement databases."
Dear God that is a stupid statement.
"In short it's a large and diverse group and many are well assimilated. The man in this attack certainly appeared to be from all externalities."
There was plenty of public evidence that he was rapidly un-assimilating himself. He was wearing a Sudi dress for goshsakes - and not stylishly like Caitlin.
Or the Boston bombers.
http://kron4.com/2015/12/02/20-people-shot-in-southern-california/
Farook was in touch over the phone and via social media with more than one international terrorism subject who the FBI were already investigating, law enforcement officials said.
It appears that Farook was radicalized, which contributed to his motive, though other things — like workplace grievances — may have also played a role, other law enforcement sources said.
Blogger Sam said...
This one is a weird one.
My theory is they were lone-wolfish jihadis readying themselves for a Paris-style rampage (more likely in Los Angeles than in San Bernardino IMHO) then he got pissed off at his work party and decided on the spur of the moment to do the deed there. Speaks of low discipline.
I've been thinking the same thing. I can picture the scene.
Husband comes home from long day at work and sits down to dinner.
Wife: How was work, honey?
Husband: Terrible. Just terrible!
Wife: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?
Husband: Work! These idiots, these kafir! They want me to go to diversity classes!
Wife: Whatever for?
Husband: They said I don't treat women with respect.
Wife: Well, that's true.
Husband: Of course it's true. You're not deserving!
Wife: Good point. What else?
Husband: I said we should stone all homosexuals and they got angry at that.
Wife: What? They don't stone abominations here? How terrible!
Husband: Yes. Terrible. We must jihad.
Wife: But what of the baby?
Husband: Forget the baby! We must jihad you cow! I am your husband and you will jihad with me.
Wife: Yes husband, of course. Jihad it is. Let me just take junior and drop him at your mom's house.
I'm sure it went exactly like that.
Oh, his wife was from Pakistan?
Also, a bad country. (not that everybody or most people from there are terrorists, just that that's one place they come from.
there might have been a reason why they didn't notice her,
http://shoebat.com/2015/12/03/88800/
it's not an actual name, it's a kunya,
Georgie said...
The House blocked a bill from debate that would prohibit those on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns.
Because they said, it's got too manyof the wrong people on it, and it's too easy to gte on that list.
But being a passenger on an airplane is not a real threat, as long as the cockpit door is kept locked (but not by one pilot, acting alone) and as long as you have people go through metal detectors. Guns would be more of a danger.
By that logic, the whole no-cly list shold be abolished.
It's easy enough anyway to get off it. All somebody has to do is change their name.
Hey if Tashkeen had survived the shooting, she'd be one of those widows that Obama told us not to worry about.
Can we acknowledge that our Western lifestyle is at odds with Salafist Muslims? It doesn't matter where a person was born, if they begin to believe that our society is a cancer that must be eliminated, then it doesn't matter if they were born in Chicago or Pakistan. Uncomfortable truth; I'm not sure of the solution.
Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned?
Possibly. It depends on how many cases they have to monitor. The two of them may have been on the FBI's radar, but not have enough red flags against their names to warrant close attention. Sort of like triage. Or the FBI may have noticed them, but decided that with a baby at home they weren't a terrorist threat. There's nothing wrong with a Muslim going on the Hadj, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with getting married.
Or the federal agencies may have missed them entirely. You can trust me when I say that we'll never really know.
And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
Heck, they couldn't even catch the Tsarnaev brothers, despite urgent warnings from the Russians.
We can still kill the kid. Baby snakes grow up to bite.
In my mind, this one is on Barack Obama. Terrorism is his job and he has been saying since Paris that we are safe, safe safe! Also, in my mind there is a point that these horrendous shootings and terrorism converge. The left focuses on gun control while the right focuses on war. Neither one will solve anything, imo.
Their plotting (and there had to be others) and their bomb factory were reason enough to arrest them.
Can you imagine the media's response IF they had been arrested before their shooting rampage? CAIR would have trotted those two out as they did the BIL yesterday. Imagine the young couple standing next to a podium with their 6 month old talking about how RACIST! the FBI is when they're just a young family trying to live the American Dream.
According to shoebat, the legal name of his wife hints at an attack.
I don’t worry too much about stupid gun control laws being passed. Only Democrats and RINOs who are safe from opposition in their voting districts will call for more gun control laws. That’s not very many.
The rest will keep quiet about new “commonsense” gun laws because they have to get reelected and it is known among politicians in general that advocating more gun control can get you voted out of office. Ask Bernie Sanders.
The first issue I look at on a candidate’s resume is their policy on gun control. If they pass this first litmus test I’ll check and see what they think about other issues. If they do not pass they will never get my vote or my campaign contribution. Thankfully, millions of other voters feel the same way.
Obama has to make this shooting a gun control issue – otherwise it turns into an “allowing Muslim refugees who are potential shooters into America” issue.
but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
It might have helped if they understood what her name meant. Walid Shoebat that name is a name no person would have (and this must be, at best, a legally changed name)
According to what he says, the name Tashfeen Malik is almost an inside joke. The FBI does that kind of thing, sometimes, in sting operations.
http://shoebat.com/2015/12/03/88800/
Tashfeen Malik (King) is a nom de guerre for a Muslim Jihadist from the annals of Muslim history. As he is known to Muslims “تاشفين ملك الموحدين” Tashfeen Malik Al-Muahideen, in English: Tafhseen King of the Unitarians (Muslims) and the conquerer of the west. The history stems from when Yusuf ibn Tashfin led the Muslim forces in the Battle of Zallaqa/Sagrajas. He came to Andalusia from Morocco to help the Muslims fight against Alfonso VI, eventually achieving victory and allowing the Muslims to remain in Spain for centuries. The battle has been symbolic for Muslim victory against the Christians.
And the Wikipedia link indicates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_ibn_Tashfin
That although he was ibn Tashfin, he was also known as Tashafin, or Teshufin.
Maybe her name wasn't an inside joke, but it was a kind of good luck token?
During the Cold War, it was understood that we were in a death struggle with an ideological enemy. Therefore, we did not allow adherents of that ideology to enter the country, and while we could not expel US Citizens who claimed that ideology, we did our best to make their lives hard and keep them out of positions of power and authority.
The ideological enemy we were fighting then was called Communism. The ideological enemy we are facing now is called Islam. We (sort of) won that fight. We are losing this one. Simply because a lot of Americans can't come to terms with the idea that an ideology can call itself a religion.
This asshole was born in the USA. That made him a US citizen. But being an adherent of an ideology that it inimical to Constitutional rule, he was no American.
"Fairness" is a funny term. Everybody is for it, but it means different things to different people.
Some people think that it is not fair to have money taken out of their paychecks that they earned by working hard all week and give it to some jihadi on welfare who uses his free time to plan ways to kill him.
Other people think it is not fair that the guy who goes to work should have more money than the guy who sits around and does nothing productive and only plans jihad.
So when anybody says that we can't violate a principle of "fairness," without further definition, I can only wonder what they are smoking.
IntellectuallyCurious said...
How did they manage to buy this many rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion? Is it that easy for anyone to buy such large quantities?
12/3/15, 12:39 PM
Yes, it is easy for people to purchase ammunition in various quantities in most of the USA. Some states / jurisdictions have quantity / caliber restrictions but in most cases, a non-issue.
I get get ammo local at Walmart, gun stores, etc., or I can get it from gun shows, or I can order it online. As it should be...
the problem is the people doing the vetting and the investigating are all a bunch of ignoramuses. If you had people from those places doing the vetting, just asking questions, and noticing things like this impossible name, it would be a lot better. You actually need (good) people from these regions. Doing background.
If we assume that we are at war with radical Islam ( a fair assumption ) then I think we are within our rights - and values as well - to be very restrictive in our immigration policy toward any Muslim nation. Would we have freely allowed German immigration during WWII? I think not. To me the entire Muslim world has become suspect. I would rather make a mistake being too restrictive than not restrictive enough.
AA asks a good question:
Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?
As another commentator noted above, these aren't quite "our" principles.
For example: Our immigration policy from about 1920 to about 1965, was to basically allow immigrants in from only 3 countries: England, Ireland, Germany. (That's probably, in part, why Wisconsin is 88% white.)
This was discrimination plain and simple. It was designed to target foreigners, most likely to assimilate into the American culture and society.
I share *your* principle of freedom, but I think "nondiscrimination" and "fairness" are too vague.
Returning to the practical world, we, Americans, have a problem with radical Muslims, who don't like our society, don't like modern western society, and want to kill and/or injure as many of us as possible. So, if you are trying to apply your principle of 'nondiscrimination" to radical Muslims, and their non-radical enablers, then you are not serious about the problem.
Tashfeen Malik Al-Muahideen, in English: Tafhseen King of the Unitarians (Muslims) and the conquerer of the west.
If that isn't a title to send shivers down your spine! Tashfeen the Unitarian!
I know, he was a Unitarian the way the commies in the Spanish Civil War were Republicans. Still, Hemingway got a good joke out of that in For Whom the Bell Tolls...
I think you are asking a lot of the FBI. They can't have 24/7 surveillance on everyone who may have contacted someone under investigation. I assume the FBI had a chance to see the communications and they were fairly innocent.
If it can't be done (and, no, it cannot be done) --- what, PRECISELY, is the benefit of importing thousands of military aged men from a region where this type of behavior isn't exactly rare?
Will they make our country BETTER? Seems unlikely.
The House blocked a bill from debate that would prohibit those on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns.
As well they should. You can opt to forego your rights with no due process if you so choose to. Don't expect others to follow suit.
If we're so concerned about potential terrorist's civil liberties regarding guns, why should we expect better screening of potential terrorists?
Using your logic, why not suspend due process entirely? Why should we be so concerned with a potential murderer's civil liberties?
Why would a terrorist bother to come as a refugee given the 2+ year wait, when they can come as a student or fiancée etc?
You assume a 2 year wait. I don't. The UN is not a group with any actual claim to credibility.
And aren't there so many U.S. citizens who are potential terrorists that the extreme focus on refugees is a bit misplaced?
"Why put out the fire? There's so much other wood it can burn!"
Ann Althouse said...
"To my mind, the "Islamophobe" accusation is really a confession of a belief that the government cannot do the screening and security it purports to do. Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness? I think it's a cheap excuse for failure."
The keys to this puzzle are Common Principles.
It takes almost everyone in a society to value non-discrimination, freedom, and fairness and to do what it takes to make that achievable. Most of us do have those goals and people who are working for solutions to this in good faith will agree on most things.
The problem is we do not have common principles. Obama clearly does not value freedom. His first reaction to this event is gun control. He even said about this attack that shootings like this only happen in the US from a summit IN PARIS. His hatred of this country must be seething to be that off.
The biggest problem on this topic is that Islam as a religion is incompatible with non-discrimination, freedom, and fairness. Sharia has rules for repressing women. Discrimination against Muslims is hard-coded into Islam. Freedom and Islam are fundamentally incompatible.
Because, neighbors, who were suspicious were afraid to be called racist for thinking there was something wrong. Remember See something, Say something?? Look how well it worked for Irving Texas teachers!!
IntellectuallyCurious said...
How did they manage to buy this many rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion? Is it that easy for anyone to buy such large quantities?
12/3/15, 12:39 PM
My wife and I routinely burn through several hundred rounds of ammunition of several different calibers during only an hour or so at the range. The only economical way to purchase ammunition - and particularly when there are now year+long shortages of given calibers - is in 1000-round or greater lots.
People who would think nothing of someone possessing 1000 pieces of orecchiette get wide-eyed at the idea of someone possessing 1000 pieces of a different commodity consumed just as rapidly.
The last person you want owning a firearm is someone who exhausts and replaces his 20-round box of ammunition every several years or so. Given that level of training, the chance of him hitting what he is aiming at becomes dangerously low.
Yes, it is too much to expect for the FBI to detect all things like this, particularly when there are so many "gun-free zones". What it takes is for the risk-reward ratio to change for these people so that they risk getting snuffed out quickly before they can do more damage. This means more people carrying.
Yes. It's too much to expect the FBI and Immigration to catch every radical.
That's the point.
That's why it's such an obvious lie that we can vet tens of thousands of additional Syrian refugees on short notice.
well there is the problem of transliteration from Arabic, however DHS has trained it's personnel to ignore such detail, in favor of former veterans and prolifers for instance,
Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned?
The travel wouldn't have raised any alarms. He went to KSA for his hajj, which is something they're all supposed to do, and he went to Pakistan to pick up the wife. That's pretty standard non-terrorist stuff.
You'd think the FBI would have realized something was up based on social media, but then again I suspect there are a whole lot of Middle Easterners in the US who have potentially sketchy associations in the old country, and the FBI doesn't have the resources to run them all down. He was probably smart enough not to post something that would raise red flags.
If the FBI doesn't have the resources to track and investigate these kinds of associations now, what's going to happen after we let in a whole bunch of refugees from the Middle East? Particularly when there are large, well financed groups who are openly plotting to slip attackers in with the flow. We have no moral or legal duty to let foreign nationals settle in the US.
The MSM is still speculating about motive. What in the world could possibly be the motive?
It’s not the Muslims allowed into America that’s the problem – it’s their children a few years later. Time bombs.
We're not allowed to profile.
They went undetected because the Obama regime decided it was more important to spend $80 billion on green energy rather than hire FBI agents. What we have to show for it is bankrupt Solyndra (and others) and home grown terrorists consorting with foreign borne terrorists.
The guy is not good at the commander and chief thing. He's only good at the "rabble rousing" thing.
The House blocked a bill from debate that would prohibit those on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns.
Well, of course. Legislatures can't repeal constitutional amendments, at least, not without going through the amendment process. That bill would allow the government to strip anyone it pleases of his guns simply by putting him on a list.
I remember a time when even leftists understood you had to convict someone of a crime to strip him of his constitutionally guaranteed rights. Damn, I feel old.
Why would a terrorist bother to come as a refugee given the 2+ year wait, when they can come as a student or fiancée etc?
Two words: Executive order.
Our current POTUS ignores laws he doesn’t like. The refugees, if they are allowed to enter America, will be ‘fast-tracked’ by Obama. Two years will turn into two weeks. 10,000 refugees will turn into 100,000 – for the children. For humanity. For more Democrat voters.
If you object you are an uncaring monster.
Just did a ctrl+f! Not one comment by garage! What??? No funny garage, "you right wingers are crazy" comments? I guess he used up his material on Tuesday. Prolly should just let sleeping dogs lie, huh?
Premature evacuation placed Iraqis et al at risk. Now opportunistic immigration places European, Americans, Canadians, et al at risk.
I just caught coverage of the shootings at lunch on the Caliphate News Network- the reporters and commentators are puzzling over the murderer's motives. They seem to have accepted that they were in fact Muslims, but "have they been radicalized?". Do you think?
First, they would have to want to catch them. You are assuming a fact not in evidence. The Obama Administration is in FAVOR of bringing into this country people who see no problem with jihad.
And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
Who cares? They're all heading to Madison per the smarty pants City Council's request. The more the merrier.
See something. Say something. Be accused of racism.
Is there no way to fight terrorism that doesn't violate our principles of nondiscrimination, freedom, and fairness?
Lincoln couldn't (suspension of habeas corpus).
FDR couldn't (internment of Japanese citizens).
Bush and Obama have expanded warrantless surveillance to a level not yet understood.
"Give me freedom, or give me death!" means death is an option on the table. We're going to have to decide, and we have often picked the latter.
Blogger grackle said...
"I don’t worry too much about stupid gun control laws being passed. Only Democrats and RINOs who are safe from opposition in their voting districts will call for more gun control laws. That’s not very many. "
Unfortunately, while that is true at the national level, it is not always true locally. Here in Oregon, the Legislature, which mostly represents Portland, is constantly dreaming up little Bloombergian hassles to inflict upon gun owners. The hope intent is to make it harder to legally buy guns, and also throw more gun owners in prison on technical infractions.
Is it that easy for anyone to buy [ammunition in] such large quantities?
(A) Yes. Plus if they had friends and/or co-conspirators who could buy extra ammo for them, it wouldn't be hard to accumulate way more ammo than the two deceased shooters had on hand without exceeding any threshold that the federal government could set for "too much."
(B) The latest reports indicate that the two shooters had 4500 rounds at home, split between 9mm handgun ammo and .223 rifle ammo, plus another 1600 rounds in the car for 6100 rounds total. Between matches and practice a top competitive shooter can go through way more than that in a year. You could lock down ammo sales if and only if you plan to have Americans not compete in international shooting events (like for instance, Kim Rhode and her 5 Olympic medals).
This entire thread, including the initial Althouse post, is an excellent example of why innumeracy (that it, illiteracy in math) is such a problem.
Here's the deal: It is mathematically impossible to achieve perfect results with imperfect knowledge.
In statistics, this seemingly-obvious statement is actually quite deep. For any detection mechanism without perfect knowledge, there are always two kinds of errors: false negatives and false positives. You can adjust the relative probability of the two, but you cannot eliminate both at the same time.
The tradeoff between false positives and false negatives is well-illustrated by the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic).
What does that mean? The only way to detect all muslim terrorists is to label every muslim a terrorist. The only way to ensure that no muslim is falsely labeled a terrorist is to not label any muslim as a terrorist.
Sorry, that's math. It's reality. Spending more money does not change reality, despite how much liberals want it to. Compromising our principles and denying civil rights to people based on their religion won't work either, despite calls for that from the right.
See, not everything can be fixed via politics. Sometimes reality just intrudes.
In this climate, if your employer hires a person who wears Islamic dress, is that a micro-aggression?
Well, to be fair, it's a "watch list", not a "round them up and boot them out of the country before they do something really awful list".
I know this sounds extreme. But. In light of the lefts naked ambition to disarm the entire nation, in direct violation of enumerated constitutionally protected civil rights, the police and prosecuters need to start conducting Wisconsin style John Doe investigations on potetial terrorists. Middle of the night raids, seizing personal property, Computers, paper files. The treasury dept can start seizing bank accounts of Muslims returning from visits to the Middle east, No legal representation will be allowed, and a gag order put in place so those investigated can not leak any of the govt activities to anyone. If we are going to strip civil rights, at least target potential terrorists. Not like stripping law abiding citizens of their constitutional right to self defense.
As long as we are at the abyss, muzzle the press. All reports and content must first be approved.
Others may have made this point already, but the answer to the question "why didn't the government know about this and do something to stop it" lies, at least in part, in the cancellation of the NSA's authority to collect and cross-check metadata that would have shown the connections between these people and known terrorists before they implemented their plan. We can thank the strange mix of left- and right-wingers in Congress, and President Obama, for this. I hope somebody puts the screws to Rand Paul about it.
After 9/11, the metaphor was that the government had "failed to connect the dots." Now, unfortunately, the government has been denied the ability even to identify where the dots are, much less to connect them.
The best argument against barring "Syrian" "refugees" is that even if we do so, terrorists will still be able to get into the US on tourist visas. I think that's so. It's also true that native-borns may become terrorists, as appears to have happened in this case.
But Government has an obligation to be honest with the people. The Obama Administration should stop pretending that it can "vet" immigrants and prevent terrorists from getting into the country. The Administration should say, We can't really protect you from foreign terrorists, but that's one of the glories of living in a free country. You are all on the front lines of the War Against America. Keep Calm and Carry On.
Off-topic, but does a soul expect Obama to honor the old "Presidents don't criticize other Presidents" (that only Republicans tend to abide by anyway) when a Republican is in the WH?
jacksonjay: "Just did a ctrl+f! Not one comment by garage! What??? No funny garage, "you right wingers are crazy" comments? I guess he used up his material on Tuesday. Prolly should just let sleeping dogs lie, huh?"
garage has found the first responders response to the muslim terrorist action vexing because he, garage, certainly never asked for the officers to protect him from terrorists!
Apparently, that represents some sort of threshold litmus test for one garage mahal, defender of Hamas terrorists reputation as "courageous" fighters! Unlike those icky Israelis.
Short answer: California is an immigrant state. It attracts millions to their social welfare.
The fact that they are racists and difficult to live with, is not apparent at the beginning. But sooner or later, someone will die a violent death, and then you'll understand why Real Americans(TM) won't live there.
And we're being asked to trust the government with screening immigrants, but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
The bigger risk was not Malik, it was Farook. The profile of a typical terrorist is a second generation immigrant who feels disconnected from both his historical / ethnic culture and his new one. The alienation makes these young people susceptible to terroristic (or other cultish) appeals. Let's look down the road a little bit and recognize that preening over our moral superiority is not a sufficient reward to justify recreating circumstances here that drive terrorism and other social conflict in Europe.
damikesc said...
Off-topic, but does a soul expect Obama to honor the old "Presidents don't criticize other Presidents" (that only Republicans tend to abide by anyway) when a Republican is in the WH?
Obama is the Last and Forever President. Even Hillary will be an asterisk.
I am Laslo.
Here is the FBI definition of domestic terrorism:
“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:
1. Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
2. Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
3. Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
The first and third elements are clearly met. The second is based on how the intent "appears." Since the civilian population has already been intimidated and coerced, subparagraph (i) of item 2 is satisfied.
There is no requirement of a broader conspiracy or of direction from some organization, domestic or foreign. You don't have to infer what was in their heads. The test is based on effect, and the effect is clear.
What are hey waiting for?
The President and the Attorney general have to be behind this.
Given the history of the Boston Bombers (multiple warnings from foreign governments), and the FBI's failure to follow up, in part because of their own rules limiting scrutiny of Muslims, and the history behind the Fort Hood mass murderer, who left a clear trail but was politically off limits, I think it is ridiculous to expect that the FBI would detect something like this.
If you ask the impossible, you are the culprit.
The FBI couldn't detect and stop the recruitment office jihadist, and there's no way they would pick up someone like this.
There are, to be blunt about it, too many people in the US looking at some of these sites and interacting with some of these suspicious characters overseas. The FBI couldn't possibly have the manpower to investigate each one, and if they tried, they would immediately be accused of religious discrimination and harassment of Muslims.
Which is why it's a losing proposition to import a bunch of Syrian refugees. When you are in a hole, stop digging.
There is no recourse but to shoot them as they pop up, and yes we can expect continued civilian domestic casualties for years to come.
It makes me question the sanity of those pushing gun control,frankly.
I am sure these people will always be armed - they don't even need firearms to inflict high casualties. Gasoline and a match will do. All it takes is for a few of them to get together and work in concert. The best the FBI and NSA can do is to make it difficult to bring larger groups of attackers together. I think they are doing a decent job of that.
The square that cannot be circled here is that the government is being asked to screen and investigate people who might be suspicious or suspected of terrorism, but it is also being asked to do so without discriminating on the basis of age, gender, race, religion, nationality, appearance etc.
That's a bit of a problem when the terrorists happen to primarily belong to a certain religion of peace and either come from or have roots in a certain area of the world. In other words, common sense suggests a certain profile of a terrorist, while out of concerns for equality, it is insisted there be no profiling. Part of me thinks this insistence against profiling is the fear that it could work and therefore also be used to justify profiling in other situations (think police).
The people in charge have decided to avert their eyes and hope that the domestic intelligence forces can intervene (though how they're supposed to do that is unclear). The problem is they've also caused others, including apparently the neighbors of the latest group, to also avert their eyes. But they will stand in front of the cameras, lie through their teeth that all is well and that the consequences of their unacknowledged failures require the restriction of the liberties of the innocent, even as they refuse to restrict the liberties of the guilty.
Here in Oregon, the Legislature … is constantly dreaming up … hassles to inflict upon gun owners.
I feel bad for the commentor. Impractical as it may be, perhaps the answer is to move to a red state where the 2nd Amendment is respected.
For instance, there are lots of jobs in Texas. Open carry for CCL holders begins on January 1st. But Texas is only one of many states that honor the 2nd Amendment. Find one and make a home there.
Just the other day, Chris Christie was criticized for refusing to admit even women and children as refugees until the FBI director could confirm that there is an effective vetting process. He said we know that woman with infants have been involved in terror attacks in the past. Now we have another example right here: a mother left her infant with her mother and then launched a terror attack with her husband in San Bernardino. Is the media attacking Christie now?
Ms Maleek, (I know Efendi is the reference for males) apparently passed counter terror screening to be admitted here, according to CBS News's Margaret Brennan,
"The only way to detect all muslim terrorists is to label every muslim a terrorist. The only way to ensure that no muslim is falsely labeled a terrorist is to not label any muslim as a terrorist."
This is correct. The only way to not let any (new) Muslim terrorist into the country is to not let any Muslim into the country. Any claim to the contrary is either disingenuous or ignorant.
The current analysis is that Seyed was recruited online with an offer of a bride who was an ISIL trained expert setting up a Base Cell for use in many ISIL recruits and attacks. But a Messianic Jew co-worker freaked Seyed out with his spiritual presence thereby triggering an early amateurish attack next door to a Police Training Academy.
Meanwhile Mullah Obama keeps pretending nothing happened.
n the 1920s you could buy a full-auto Thompson submachine gun at a hardware store - even in the 1960s you could order a rifle to your house via the Sears Roebuck catalog. Now you have to go to a heavily fortified gun shop, usually in a sketchy area of town because zoning boards don't want them in nice areas
Exactly ! I grew up in the 40s and 50s. My first gun was a .22/.410 over and under that I got when I was 9. My father took me pheasant hunting and I was not allowed to load my gun but walked the fields with them. I was finally allowed to load and shoot when I was about 13. The first time I fired a Colt .45 auto was when I was 10.
The deterioration of life in this country has gone on since Lyndon Johnson and the 60s idiots. The Kennedy and MLK assassinations had a lot to do with the change in tone.
Racial relations are much, much worse than they were even in the 1950s.
It's a little like the French Revolution. In medieval times, the peasants were so beaten down that there was no chance they would rebel. By 1789, the nobles were starting to support the peasants and the peasants got very ambitious and Guillotined most of the nobles.
We are seeing the same phenomenon. Blacks are not satisfied with greatly improved chances in life and demand guaranteed outcomes. The Muslims know they are a failing civilization and think they can take what we have. They never heard the fable about the goose that laid the golden eggs.
I suspect that we will eventually have to fight for our freedom again. Civil society is not the default condition of life. The millennials don't know this and will learn the hard way.
This morning on Fox & Friends I listened to a woman discussing the massacre in San Bernardino by a devout Muslim, Syed Rizwan Farook. The conversation went well until she recounted how she discussed the murders committed by Farook and his wife with a close Muslim friend who said that these kinds of acts do not represent his religion, and he denounced them. She indicated that this disavowal is what more Muslims should do. I disagree.
That’s not good enough. It is not good enough for CAIR to call a news conference to denounce this violence and say it’s not the Muslim way. It’s not enough to offer an apology and say it doesn’t represent the billion Muslims who are peaceful. Muslims must do more than pay lip service.
Syed Rizwan Farook was a member of the Muslim community, a community that knew more about him than they let on. They would know when one of their members begins to act suspiciously. They would know if he buys guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition and body armor. They would know if he begins to talk about Jihad or shows a preference for ISIS. They know if he travels to the Middle East and comes back radicalized. They can see the warning signs, yet they keep quiet. Farook was not on the FBI’s terror suspect list. Farook and his wife were all in the Muslim family. He was a member of the “tribe.” The rest of America is not part of the tribe.
Meanwhile the non-Muslim community has been brainwashed into silence lest they be accused of racism.
From CBS Los Angeles: “A man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people.”
If people who oppose abortion keep silent about one of their number who talks about shooting up an abortion clinic, he would not be shielded by this kind of tribal solidarity. There are no religious texts or cultural imperatives that compel a "abortion activists” to shoot up Planned Parenthood clinics.
None.
The Koran is different. Muslims are held to a different standard. Many American think that all that “Good Muslims” need to do to distance themselves from Muslim killers is to say that the killers don’t represent their religion. That’s a lie. It’s a cheap cop-out and a willful misinterpretation of reality. The fact is that the Muslim killers believe they are acting out the beliefs of their religion. Those who have studied the Koran agree; Jihad is what the Koran teaches. It’s Muslims that don’t enforce the edicts of the Koran who are the apostates from fundamental Islam. I happen to believe that Muslim apostates are in the majority. I hope I’m right. We’ll know based not on the number of verbal denunciations of Islamic terror but on whether Muslims act to stop it.
Why weren't they stopped before they killed?
Gun. Free. Zone.
Sammy Finkelman said...
but they didn't catch Tashfeen Malik.
It might have helped if they understood what her name meant. Walid Shoebat that name is a name no person would have (and this must be, at best, a legally changed name)
I looked it up on Facebook yesterday and there were a hell of a lot of people with the name. Men and women.
The best way to look at the bizarre statements of the administration about what every intelligent person knows by now was Islamic terrorism is that it's messaging. The administration is telling its allies in the public and the press that when they are asked about this attack, they are to respond with questions about gun control and Islamophobia.
That way the minority who support the president will be able to think of themselves as one of the elect, and not one of those wicked, stupid conservatives.
These are very odd times. I feel a bit like a Soviet citizen must have felt when he heard on the radio news that the local overshoe factory has outdone its quota of production once again, when he knows the overshoe factory has been shuttered for years.
The most suspicious bit of info they had before this was: he spoke on the phone to someone who was top-1000-suspicious (disclaimer: made up number). There must be 50,000 foreign (or first-gen naturalized) muslims in the U.S. about who you could say the same (more if you count take-out orders). Do we now have probable cause for searching all of their garages? Probably not.
Perhaps we can one day enjoy the fruits of a full employment surveillance state like East Germany had.
Or we could quit creating reasons to need ubiquitous domestic surveillance.
"I feel a bit like a Soviet citizen must have felt when he heard on the radio news that the local overshoe factory has outdone its quota of production once again"
Yes, I feel the same way.
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
This will not end well.
You can make a comparison between Nadal Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter) and Robert Dear. Both of them were probably mentally disturbed along with whatever issues they had with the institutions they attacked.
But in order for the comparison to work, you would have to have Robert Dear as not only an employee of Planned Parenthood, but a psychologist working full time in the same clinic he shot up. And while the other employees noticed his odd behavior, none of them would say anything for fear of being accused of anti-Christian bigotry.
Yep, that's where we are at.
like with Zacarias Moussaoui or Nidal Hassan or Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, these are people who pinged the radar at least once,
Obama's goal is to spy on the Republicans and conservatives, especially 'climate change' deniers. After all, he believes global warming causes terrorism. Looking for real terrorist is no real big priority with him.
Oh, my goodness, Althouse:
Are you saying, "Cherchez la femme"?
Relax, The administration that brought you Benghazi and "the video" will keep you safe.
fizzymagic said... "This entire thread, including the initial Althouse post, is an excellent example of why innumeracy (that it, illiteracy in math) is such a problem. Here's the deal: It is mathematically impossible to achieve perfect results with imperfect knowledge."
That sounds a tad condescending. Who is saying why don't we have perfection? Speaking of literacy. I'm asking, given the data points here and the govt's efforts at data-collection and detection, why can't plots on this level of activity be disrupted?
"In statistics, this seemingly-obvious statement is actually quite deep. For any detection mechanism without perfect knowledge, there are always two kinds of errors: false negatives and false positives. You can adjust the relative probability of the two, but you cannot eliminate both at the same time."
Again, I don't think that the inability to achieve perfection is an excuse. I want to know why this one wasn't disrupted. I may understand and accept the explanation, but I want to hear it.
"The tradeoff between false positives and false negatives is well-illustrated by the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic). What does that mean? The only way to detect all muslim terrorists is to label every muslim a terrorist."
That's a ridiculous, inflammatory statement. Not only is it offensive and out of line with the facts here, where we know there were contacts with foreign suspects, but it wouldn't even work. You say "the only way" but it's not even a way. You'd just have a gigantic pool of very weak suspects.
"The only way to ensure that no muslim is falsely labeled a terrorist is to not label any muslim as a terrorist."
What? That does not even make sense.
"Sorry, that's math."
Huh? Speaking of problems with labels, calling something math doesn't make it math. Do the math.
"It's reality. Spending more money does not change reality, despite how much liberals want it to. Compromising our principles and denying civil rights to people based on their religion won't work either, despite calls for that from the right. See, not everything can be fixed via politics. Sometimes reality just intrudes."
You started out promising to school us in the neutral principles of math, but you ended up babbling incoherently. You made up a false premise, that someone proposed to call all Muslims terrorists and then you freaked out about it. That's not math.
Also, if you care about respecting Muslim, why didn't you capitalize the word.
cyrus83 said...
The square that cannot be circled here is that the government is being asked to screen and investigate people who might be suspicious or suspected of terrorism, but it is also being asked to do so without discriminating on the basis of age, gender, race, religion, nationality, appearance etc.
Sorry but they is them.
The Government isn't being asked, they are volunteering to do it and do it with the rules (as contradictory as they are) that they put into place. It is this government that enforces anti-discrimination laws and it is THIS government that says it can import thousands of Muslim refugees and it is THIS government that says it can screen them to make sure we are safe. No one of us put them up to this. Obama happily volunteered to do this to us.
fizzy magic said: "The only way to ensure that no muslim is falsely labeled a terrorist is to not label any muslim as a terrorist."
Althouse said: "What? That does not even make sense."
Trying not to be inflammatory here, but he's correct. This is a well established "signal detection" principle. Consider the case of detecting breast cancer from a radiograph. Over the course of examining, say, 1000 radiographs, the radiologist will make some mistakes, sometimes missing cancer (false negative) and sometimes diagnosing cancer where none exists (false positive). Your only degree of freedom is to decide which you fear more and adjust your detection threshold accordingly. The only way to completely eliminate false negatives (incorrectly calling a terrorist benign) is to change your detection threshold to the point that you label everyone you look at "a terrorist." To completely eliminate false positives (incorrectly calling an innocent a terrorist) your only recourse is to not call anyone a terrorist.
If we want to catch more of these people before they kill, we will necessarily end up discriminating against more innocents. There really is no way around that.
"If we want to catch more of these people before they kill, we will necessarily end up discriminating against more innocents. There really is no way around that."
And if I might add, this is why it's incumbent upon innocent Muslims who wish to help in the fight against Muslim terrorism to dial back the indignation. If the authorities approach you, cooperate.
Congress failed to pass a bill saying those on the no fly list should be banned from owning guns.
Well, horrors, that means we are not serious about terrorism/We are under the control of that nasty old NRA/The right favors no restrictions on guns at all!
Oh yeah, THAT's what it means.
Or, try this on for size.
Congress passed and the President signed a bill mandating imprisonment for all those on the no fly list.....
Me: The only way to detect all muslim terrorists is to label every muslim a terrorist.
Althouse: That's a ridiculous, inflammatory statement. Not only is it offensive and out of line with the facts here, where we know there were contacts with foreign suspects, but it wouldn't even work. You say "the only way" but it's not even a way. You'd just have a gigantic pool of very weak suspects.
I am sorry if I came across as condescending, but this really is a case of mathematical ignorance.
The statement that you characterized as "offensive" is a statement of fact. It is taught in first-year statistics. It has no political or racial motivation. It just reflects reality.
I'll say it again, just be to perfectly clear:
Any detection mechanism that does not have perfect information will have either false positives, false negatives, or both.
Your insistence that you want to know, in particular, why this attack was not prevented is likewise evidence of mathematical ignorance. Once again, statistics. Sorry, it is not generally possible to go back and second-guess events for which one did not have perfect knowledge and claim that "we should have known" anything.
The fact remains: it is not possible, given our current information, to reduce the rate of false negatives (attacks going undetected) without increasing the rate of false positives (people being falsely accused).
"Your insistence that you want to know, in particular, why this attack was not prevented is likewise evidence of mathematical ignorance. Once again, statistics. Sorry, it is not generally possible to go back and second-guess events for which one did not have perfect knowledge and claim that "we should have known" anything."
It's a freshman mistake to think that you can beat the ROC curve.
Again to use the breast cancer analogy, radiology practices do post-mortems on their errors in order to understand each mis-diagnosis. It's an important exercise which professionals who care about their patient's do in order to improve, but no matter how hard they work they will never exceed the ROC curve, which describes the best that is theoretically possible.
As an example, the ONLY way you can assure that no terrorists make it into the country amongst the Syrian refugees is to not admit any of them.
"I am sorry if I came across as condescending, but this really is a case of mathematical ignorance. The statement that you characterized as "offensive" is a statement of fact. It is taught in first-year statistics. It has no political or racial motivation. It just reflects reality."
So what if you made a statement of an elementary statistics principle? Unless it is responsive to what other people have said, you're fighting with a straw man. That's what I told you, and you haven't responded to that. How would you feel if my response to you was: Well, I learned in second grade that 2+2=4 and that's a fact. You can't deny that!
"I'll say it again, just be to perfectly clear: Any detection mechanism that does not have perfect information will have either false positives, false negatives, or both."
And since when does government abandoned all projects that don't have perfect results? Why have a police force at all? Why attempt anything? Perfection is obviously not the standard.
"Your insistence that you want to know, in particular, why this attack was not prevented is likewise evidence of mathematical ignorance. Once again, statistics. Sorry, it is not generally possible to go back and second-guess events for which one did not have perfect knowledge and claim that "we should have known" anything."
That doesn't make sense. I still want analysis of why it was not detected and what could have been done better, if anything. Is your idea that we should just forget what is past and move forward, hoping for better luck next time?
"The fact remains: it is not possible, given our current information, to reduce the rate of false negatives (attacks going undetected) without increasing the rate of false positives (people being falsely accused)."
You made a huge leap and it is a very foolish one. You assume people who are investigated and monitored are already being accused. You are giving up and not thinking about how actual investigations and preventive work could be done. I don't know what your motivation is. Maybe you are a very cynical person and think human endeavor is hopeless.
Althouse:
I a truly puzzled that you seem so offended by my posts. I honestly don't see why you are so worked up.
In the original summary, you wrote "Is it too much to expect the FBI and the immigration service to have detected what this couple had planned?"
The tone of the sentence makes it clear that you do not consider it "too much" for the couple to have been detected. I was attempting (badly, it seems) to explain why your conclusion that they should have been detected is almost certainly incorrect.
You made a huge leap and it is a very foolish one. You assume people who are investigated and monitored are already being accused. You are giving up and not thinking about how actual investigations and preventive work could be done. I don't know what your motivation is. Maybe you are a very cynical person and think human endeavor is hopeless.
In this country, we have civil rights. Monitoring U.S. persons in the ways you are suggesting requires a court order. As a result, to me (a non-lawyer), "accusation" and "investigation" pretty much mean the same thing. Sorry for not being clearer.
Important point: I am NOT advocating for accusing more people of being terrorists. I am NOT advocating for ANY policy at all. I am simply trying to help you see that any change in the detection probability will entail costs that will, in all likelihood, be considered unacceptable.
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