Sunday, December 6, 2015

Terror Cell With a Baby

"Before Chicago-born Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered innocents in San Bernardino, Calif., they performed a prudent and commonplace mission of mercy: They dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with Grandma for safekeeping. The couple reportedly said they were heading to an appointment with a doctor. Surely they didn't say they'd be meeting a pathologist at an autopsy table....the murderous duo slaughtering colleagues who earlier this year had thrown a shower for their new baby."

If we believe Thursday's reports that Farook had transformed into a radical - not a madman, an ill person, a racial supremacist or any other familiar category of mass murderer - then he and Malik will force us to think with new imagination about terror operations on U.S. soil. Farook and Malik evidently didn't qualify for anyone's watch list. What's most striking isn't who they were, but who they weren't.....

This is a fraught moment for America. We want home-grown terrorism exterminated, whether its perpetrators are radicalized ideologues, rogue independents or gangbangers on the streets of Chicago. The oddity of a terror cell with a baby is but one more phenomenon we have to address with the same fearless resolve."
- Chicago Tribune Editorial Board