Goose Creek- Bombers or Maroons?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

H/T the Mighty MM

The two men arrested near the Naval brig at Goose Creek are facing serious charges. The apologists began immediately explaining away the items in their car as fireworks. That was a very dumb explanation and would have meant the two men were basically fools. If your name is Ahmed Mohammed and your buddy is Youssef Megahed (Clark AFB ref anyone?) and you are driving around the US with a bunch of illegal fireworks you are a fool. It doesn't take much racial profiling to throw a flag on that play. Now as it turns out what they had was not fireworks but pipe-bombs and related accoutrements. Mohamed is charged with teaching how to make bombs, but we don't know who he taught, if it was his buddy or if it spreads wider than that.

Either way I can find no way to classify the two as anything but bombers or maroons. If they thought that a couple of young Muslim men be-bopping across the country occasionally blowing off steam by cranking off a couple of pipe bombs would be written of as youthful pranks, then they are maroons. Barring that they are bombers, that thought should not give you a warm fuzzy. We live in an unsecured country, and I mean less our lack of border control, than our open, unscrutinized existence. We can't even discuss a national ID card because women and minorities are too oppressed to get one, not to mention all our nudge, nudge, wink wink guest workers.

I have a piece I will polish up over the weekend stating what should be obvious, we will not and can not actually secure this country, period. That is why our efforts to kill or interdict them overseas are so vital. We have too many soft targets in this country. Just count the number of malls, stadiums and govt. buildings where you live. We will never be able to guard our insecurities. And even if we fenced our border to the South, does anyone really think we'll do the same up North. And even if we did, our student visa programs let in tens of thousands of young men from countries that historically provide terrorists.

I will see if I can come up with any solutions or positive notes about this, but really it points out vividly how much work we have to do in the spying and tango whacking portions of our game.

Bombing Maroons on the left, innocent men fascinated by ferrys in Seattle. Hmmm, minus the beards.......maybe?

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Comments

[Deltabravo]

Another column that makes me nod "Uh-huh." You're on a roll, Jimbo.

These guys were deliberate. You know how I know that? Because they were near a military facility. They know this country. If they were around a shopping mall, everyone would be demanding their heads on a platter in the middle of a nice pile of rice and ghee and pine nuts.

If they hit a shopping mall, all the latte-sipping nancy boys would be shrieking that the FBI should have known and stopped them sooner. (How is a question for another thread, since they aren't supposed to hear cell phone conversations with AQ masterminds back at the Mosque.)

No. These wannabees were prowling around a military base. We know the drill. If they had hurt someone, the military would have been blamed for it. ("If their troops hadn't been overseas, they would have had the manpower to stop it, yada yada blah blah.")

And everyone would have gone back to sipping their lattes because soldiers dying aren't really a concern to them, unless they're doing it overseas and you can blame the President.

[thebronze]

Not the same dudes, IMHO.

[Uncle Jimbo]

Yeah,

I don't really think it's the same guys, but the pics were close together on MM's site and it looked funny.

Cordially,

Uncle J

[Synova]

I don't like the idea of a national ID at all (but don't see any reason not to require official picture IDs for voting. (Got my son a non-driver's ID at the MDV just the other day... his job wouldn't pay him without it.))

The idea of securing borders or not admitting lots of student visas from likely places or whatever else it would take to truly control movement in this country bothers me a whole lot.

We accept some risk in exchange for freedom and that is as it should be.

[Grimmy]

There is a big difference between freedom and leaving the door wide open for whomever to walk right in and play whatever mayhem suits their twisted desires.

Anyone who's ever worked in a job, such as hotel clerk or whatever, where ID is required for service can tell you how difficult it is to know a fake out of state ID from a legit.

Us not securing our borders to a reasonable degree is just us giving in to those who's ideology demands our destruction. There is no justifiable reason for us to have so little control over who comes in and who doesn't.

[Arch]

Synova,

What's the problem with a national ID card? I have had a military ID since I was born. I was a military dependent; I was in the reserves; I was on active duty and now I'm retired. I have had a Blue US Passport, a Red Official Duty Passport and even a Black Diplomatic Passport. To get a security clearance, I filled out a form listing every place I had ever lived and accounted for all my overseas travel. I've never had any problem, ever.

Arch

[Lady Sara]

Naval Weapons Station, Goose Creek, is not just the home to a brig, it is a weapons storage facility of mammoth proportions, including nukes. A bomb placed at just the right place would blow up the place all the way to Alaska. My husband was stationed there three years and they don't take too kindly to civilians of any kind, and especially those with bomb making equipment.

[Lady Sara]

I should have also noted that it had the tightest security of any base I've ever been on in our 26 years of active duty status.

[Some Soldier's Mom]

all the latte-sipping nancy boys would be shrieking

deltabravo, the visual is more than I can handle, but the phrasing caused me to fall off my chair in hysterics... thanks for a much needed smile...

[Synova]

Arch, I've had a TS too. My feeling about privacy is that the only real thing that ensures it is that you and I are boring people and resources for snooping are limited. And, when it comes down to it, you forgot the biggest culprit... your tax return.

It might be my age but I became self-aware during the cold war. It was the bad guys (or the Germans on Hogan's Heroes) who were always demanding papers and identification even to travel. It was what made us different from them, from the Soviets, from people who didn't believe in freedom. *We* don't have to carry papers.

And even if that isn't necessarily true, I'd like to be able to pretend. At the very least I'd like to keep as an ideal the ability to travel freely without the need to identify myself.

As for the difference between individual state identification/driver's license and a national version... they still have to be issued locally and if the locals aren't trustworthy nothing has been gained. A set of standards between states (I believe my North Dakota card about 20 years ago was laminated cardboard) might be a good idea but what does a nationally issued card gain? If we need something a bit more officially weighty we do have passports available.

I want us to be able to use anonymous cash for purchases as well, even though I prefer to use my check card.

In a way it's almost like the right to own guns. The purpose is to enable citizens to resist the government if need be. And I have to think that at some point we have a choice... we can be safe or we can be free.

[Davod]

The next comment from those representing the mainsteam Muslim commumity (CAIR) will be that these guys were mentally unstable. The same as the Killers at the El Counter at LAX, the Jewish center in Seattle and the two guys who ran down the people in separate incidents.

[Davod]

PS:

I can enyone tell me if the guy who shot the killer at LAX was ever prosecuted for overkill in the use of his weapon to kill the killer?

[Grimmy]

Synova:

You are correct in that any ID that can be made, can be faked. There is no panacea in that. But, in and of itself, the concept of a national ID is no more onerous than any other form and is no loss of any freedom. Not even a hint of loss. ID is necessary in our daily lives already and a national ID would be no real difference.

I'm not necessarily in favor of the idea, btw, because there is no such thing as an ID that can't be faked. But, the concept that such an idea would, somehow, be a loss of freedom is just another red herring.

I'm not trying to pick a fight, just wanting to keep the decks clear of debris.

There's also, the strange idea that common sense security needs must be sacrificed in the name of freedom.

Much the same thing was pulled by the folk of New York in WW2. New York refused to enforce blackout conditions at night because it would "infringe upon their freedoms". New York stayed lit up. New York was one of the single most useful navigation aids to Nazi UBoats.

After crossing the Atlantic, all a UBoat skipper had to do was cruise up or down the coast until he saw the glow of New York. Then his position was fixed to a certainty. UBoat skippers sang the praises of New Yorkers after the war. New York's need to safe guard their freedom to ignore the jackbooted thugs of the government in their draconian blackout orders helped send Allied shipping to the bottom, along our Atlantic seaboard. Men died because of it.

That's just one example. One of the problems we now face is that most everyone has been taken into the habit of believing that war is something that happens somewhere else.

Now, war can reach out and kill us, here, in our homes, in huge numbers.

What I'm trying to say is, issues will be brought up from time to time. Some will be common sense applications that help ourselves and our family and friends and aid in our potential to survive this war. Some will be stupid, silly or poorly designed. If we don't start applying consideration beyond the all or nothing, anything different is bad, any security enhancement is loss of freedom type nonsense... then problems that don't need to divide us will continue to do so and further open us up to exploitation by those who either don't give a squat, or do side with our enemy's desire to see us harmed, destroyed or forced into submission.

[Deltabravo]

Grimmy, you just gave me another reason to hate New York! I had no idea about the lights.

As for IDs... no one complains when you have to show your ID when you use a credit card. Yes, that's me. That's my card. Thank you. It's nice to know you're trying to keep someone from shopping on my dime.

No one complains (except some of the students) when my local high school has student IDs. It's to keep them safe. Any stranger in the school trying to blend in is immediately identified by his lack of one. What parent thinks that's a bad idea in this day and age?

Yet these same people have issues with an ID card? I've had my share of passports and badges and foreign ID cards. As long as there is evil out there, looks like we're stuck with having to verify we are who we say we are.

[Rich Casebolt]

My preference is a state ID, configured to national standards -- and only tied to government databases at the state level, accessible to the feds only when they have a reason to access it that the state recognizes as sound, overriding this gatekeeper only with due process.

I think we must be careful about concentrating personal information at the federal level ... and I think it wise that access to my personal info is maintained as a No Lone Zone, to keep the feds honest.

This is similar to the way I would approach gun control -- the feds enforce the 2nd Amendment; the states enforce gun safety and denial to felons -- maintaining a healthy tension between the two, so neither can encroach on my rights.

I understand that military ID and passports do not fit this model ... but in the case of the former, DOD has legitimate reasons in the performance of its mission, outside the purview of state governments, for issuing the ID and gathering underlying data ... while the latter is intimately tied to international travel, which is the proper purview of the State Department (to affirm our legitimacy to other nations we travel to) and DHS (to make sure we are who we say we are, coming back).

Neither is necessary for identification within the United States, outside of military installations and/or military activities.

While I am open to contrary views on the subject ... I seek a PRACTICAL balance between the protection of my rights BY the government, and the protection of my rights FROM the government ... I lean more towards the reluctance Synova expresses for a universal, national ID.

[Synova]

At what point *ever* do school students show their ID cards? My daughter will have one now that she's in a public high school but there is no *gate*. There is no one controlling access at the school. No metal detector either, and if there was my child would not attend that school. I'd have her home for school again.

Homeschoolers have discovered that in the good interest of education that the mere *being* of their children has become criminal and that carrying identification and papers has become necessary in some places in this country so that young people obeying the law in public are not subject to detention by police. So they carry papers... an ID card of some sort... because obeying the law is not enough.

Shall we require check-points for adults and require citizenship papers and permissions to travel so that we can catch non-citizens or pick up those who don't have legitimate reason to drive from Florida to Goose Creek?

I'm not against security and I'm most emphatically not against vigilant citizens maintaining a prudent level of suspicion. I do, however, agree wholeheartedly with this statement, "...we will not and can not actually secure this country, period. That is why our efforts to kill or interdict them overseas are so vital."

What I see most when it comes to domestic security is feel-good measures to prove that we're "doing something" to keep the alarmists calmed down, never-mind if those measures are effective. The real work has to be done "over there." That and secretly with sneaky spy tactics that get the nanny-stater's panties all bunched up while they figure out how to monitor us with greater accuracy "for the children."

[jordan]

I'm also a little uneasy about a national ID card, not so much because it would circumscribe freedoms but because we've already invested the fed with far too much involvement in everything. It's more a philosophical objection than anything else. The states need to reclaim their rights to decide issues according to the preferences of it's own citizens, as we've seen some states do by implementing anti-illegal alien measures in light of federal failures to do so.

Still, law enforcement has to be able to query and mine country-wide databases to maintain internal security against crime and terrorism. I don't know how to reconcile the two -- maybe just considerable safeguards.

Like many other issues, we give the federal government more and more tax dollars, they claim they'll use it to ensure security, defense and whatnot, and then it turns out they can't, or won't. The trend is toward state governments taking it upon themselves to cope with things we previously thought of as federal missions, and that's mostly a positive thing.