Sudden Jihad Syndrome... again...

Victor Davis Hanson :

...2) what I once in two NRO essays called al Qaedism, or the spontaneous rage of disaffected Muslims, who connect their own failures in some sense to generic radical Islamist sentiments, and act out that anger by running over the innocent (San Francisco or North Carolina), shooting Jews (the LAX or Seattle attacks), or shooting up malls or sniping. These are of course different from but in addition to the 24 organized plots that have been broken up since 9/11, four of them this year alone.

In reaction officials and news people often opt for therapeutic exegeses — stress, often of the post-traumatic sort, ill-feeling and bias shown Muslims, family problems, or brainwashing by nefarious outside actors — to explain the cold-blooded nature of the murdering...

It's called Sudden Jihad Syndrome, Mr Hanson. I blogged a bit about it two years ago here:

[Quoting Srdja Trifkovic] ...The SJS pattern, both in America and in Europe, is boringly predictable: a Muslim commits an act of violence, or is caught plotting to commit one. The authorities are either quick to deny the suspect's links with Islamic terrorism, or, if such a link is nevertheless suspected, adamant that he is acting alone. The local Muslim community responds with a mix of indignation and denial. Non-Muslim civic leaders then respond by reassuring the Muslim community that it is loved and appreciated. The media report heart rendering stories of the Muslim sense of sadness, rejection, alienation, or else dwell on the perpetrator's history of woe—in a "Bosnian" case by evoking alleged wartime traumas and blaming the Serbs.

Over the past couple of years there have been several SJS incidents directed against Americans. It is remarkable that even when the perpetrator explicitly linked his motives to jihad, the authorities refused to accept his word....

Something I wrote back then, which still applies:

...And we are not just talking left/liberal elites here. Republican leaders do it as well. I suspect they all know, perhaps unconsciously, that there is no centralized elite-controlled remedy, that the only way to fight such sporadic attacks is to empower ordinary people to arm themselves and watch and fight back. And to communicate horizontally, rather than up and down a hierarchy.

And the critical lack in many of our leaders is the belief that our civilization is worth fighting for. Or anything is worth fighting for. They may concede that that we should fight terrorists in far-off Afghanistan, where they don't have to see it. But what's also needed is to get really hard-assed right here in our own towns. There are groups right here who include or shelter our deadly enemies, and they should be getting slammed around hard. For the sake of peace.

And a lot of our paralysis is due to political correctness. For instance anyone in school now is bombarded with the message that America did a loathsome thing by interning Japanese-Americans in WWII. Well, OK, but it is never mentioned that IF that community had really included the spies and saboteurs that were feared, and IF there had been no other way to stop them, then internment would have been the correct decision. I suspect that a lot of people preaching jihad should be interned right now. But if I were a leader I would not suggest it, because most people have been so brainwashed that they could not even consider or discuss the question. They literally could. Not. Think. (I recommend you read: Political correctness lowers your effective IQ.)