We do this stuff for a reason...

This is ONE of the reasons we need to monitor terrorist communications...

....In short, the network itself has become so decentralized that it is almost as easy as plugging a laptop into a wide-area network jack, figuratively as well as literally. With the demolition of al-Qaeda's functional leadership, the lack of direction has moved the jihadi movement from the hills of Afghanistan to a system of mosques and imams, preaching their own brand of hatred. Young men looking for a cause or an outlet for their frustrations can easily find these Muslim supremacists. If they can't find them physically, they can certainly find them with just a few minutes on the Internet. This particular group found each other, and then found like-minded prototerrorists in five other nations, including the US.

The above is the bad news. The good news is that the rapid decentralization of Islamic terror has led to a rapid decline in the discipline and quality of the jihadis. The Canadians caught up with this group two years ago and have followed them closely, apparently never tipping their hand to the seventeen bright lights they arrested yesterday and the day before. By monitoring their Internet communications, they not only discovered this cell but also others around the world, all of whom have now been neutralized as threats. The increasing reliance on amateurs like the Toronto 17 makes it more likely that we will continue to root out their partners, wherever they may be....

Canadians, and other nations presumably including the US, have been watching these guys for 2 years. And, during that time, when any pomposos denounced the "erosion of our civil rights" due to monitoring communications, those government officials who happened to be in the know would have had to keep their mouths shut and just take the heat.

Under ideal circumstances there should probably have been no public arrests at all. The junior jihadis should have been quietly whisked off to Gitmo, so as not to alert others that they are being watched.

However, the loss of secrecy is counterbalanced by giving ordinary decent citizens a look at the reasons why we are waging a necessarily secret war. Leftists will be unmoved of course; they are opposed to the very idea of fighting for Western (and especially Anglospheric) values of liberty and economic opportunity. They are on the other side.

But honorable people will take note of this, and be more likely to give our leaders the support they deserve.

One other thought. Our leaders are good men, but one does tend to harbor doubts that they have the imagination to really exploit these situations. One hopes that we are setting up our own Internet jihad networks, with our own radical imams, luring the gullible young goofballs off to our own "terrorist training camps," or supplying them with some very special recipes for explosives...