A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

NPR covers the Senate's Homeland Security Committee meeting in which the big question is trying to understand "homegrown terrorists." Unfortunately we are subjected to the chair of the committee - Joe Lieberman and the responses of the FBI's assistant director, John Miller. Here's just a sample of this report:

Miller: "So the questions that we ask are, and now we ask them again, and in a different way with the Fort Dix case: 'Where did they become radicalized? How did they become radicalized?'"

Temple-Raston (of NPR): "Miller said the FBI and a number of other government agencies are still searching for clues....They (the FBI) want to understand who radicalized these men and when it happened."

Amazing! NPR reports this foolery as if it were worthy of merit. Hmm...what on earth could be radicalizing someone? Couldn't be the US President calling for a crusade. Couldn't be a wacko-evangelical crusading general involved in the torture of Iraqi Muslims. Definitely wasn't the special treatment meted out to Muslims after 9-11. Surely it wasn't the respect the US gives to dead combatants or the religious beliefs of Muslim detainees. Not the minor inconveniences shown to travelers with "terrorist" sounding names.

I in no way condone people plotting to kill US troops on their bases or engaging in violence to further their political goals - but really is there any confusion about what fuels this kind of radicalization? The really challenging question that NPR will never touch is to ask what leads to the radicalization of people like George Bush and Dick Cheney who seem to opt for violence as a first answer to any conflict and have already achieved what these suspects are alleged to have desired -- the deaths of thousands of US troops. That's the investigation I'd like to see.