The thing I hate about Russians is how quickly they jump to conclusions.  For example, last week, an unexplicable explosion caused a train wreck in Russia.  Despite the fact that a lot of things cause explosions, Russian reporters quickly rushed to the following conclusion:

The worst terrorist attack to hit the Russian heartland in five years was almost certainly engineered by Islamist extremists, who are increasingly active in Russia’s volatile northern Caucasus region, say analysts.

First of all, they assume that it was a terrorist attack.  It could have easily been a man-made disaster.  It is also disappointing that they blamed Islamist extremists.  Where is CRIR (Council for Russian Islamic Relations) denouncing these blanket accusations.  It is a little disturbing that the Russian press would not take an apologist stance and try and figure out how Russians themselves are to blame for this little mishap with the train.  After all, Vladimir Putin has yet to travel to the heart of the Muslim world and make a spectacular apology to the Muslims for the centuries of mistreatment at the hand of the Russians.  They get what they deserve.

A man-made disaster

If you compare the Russian response to what could have easily been a mere act of spontaneous combustion, to the American media’s response to the Fort Hood human-caused disaster we learn a valuable truth about terrorism:  Terrorism lies in the eye of the beholder.  The United States hasn’t had a terrorist attack on its soil since 9/11, because we have stopped calling these man-made disasters terrorist attacks.  Problem solved.

Meanwhile, it was only a few short weeks ago that I read the following report on Stratfor:

In the 11th edition of the online magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battle), which was released to jihadist Web sites last week, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi wrote an article that called for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets. The targets included “any tyrant, intelligence den, prince” or “minister” (referring to the governments in the Muslim world like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), and “any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc.,” (an obvious reference to the United States and Europe and Westerners living in Muslim countries).

Al-Wahayshi, an ethnic Yemeni who spent time in Afghanistan serving as a lieutenant under Osama bin Laden, noted these simple attacks could be conducted with readily available weapons such as knives, clubs or small improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to al-Wahayshi, jihadists “don’t need to conduct a big effort or spend a lot of money to manufacture 10 grams of explosive material” and that they should not “waste a long time finding the materials, because you can find all these in your mother’s kitchen, or readily at hand or in any city you are in.”

While Al-Wahayshi’s new battle plan would be less-frightening if we were willing to admit that a terrorist attack doesn’t have to always result in a destroyed skyscraper; or if we were more worried about preventing future attacks instead of giving enemy combatants full-constitutional rights and a civilian trial,  at least Al-Wahayshi gives away their plan.  They are going to use materials from your mother’s kitchen.  If we all join together and clean out our mother’s kitchens of anything that could be used in a terrorist attack, we can stop these attacks.  Also, don’t invite Muslims over for dinner.