A photo from the scene. Yahoo/ABC News.
A terror suspect was killed in an altercation with the the police and FBI in Boston. Yahoo/ABC News. The suspect, Usaama Rahim, was under 24 hour FBI surveillance. Another suspect was arrested because he was connected to Rahim. When the FBI and a Boston police officer confronted Rahim at a CVS, he charged at them with a military style knife. Rahim was under surveillance for making threats against police and being connected to Jihadi beliefs. Both suspects may have been radicalized by ISIS propaganda online.
My Comment:
Bring a knife to a gunfight and you are going to have a bad time. Good on the police and the FBI for surviving. From what it sounds like they didn't have much of a choice. It didn't sound like they were going to arrest Rahim, just let him know that he was being watched. Pulling out a knife and charging the cops was probably not a smart idea. Like the two men that attacked that free speech event and got shot without accomplishing anything, Rahim became a "martyr" by failing.
And ISIS's call for American Muslims to attack police officers is nothing less then idiotic. There are fewer targets in America that are harder targets then a police officer. Every cop in America is armed and they have been accused in the past of being trigger happy. Attacking one with a knife or a hatchet is a great way to get shot and a terrible way to actually accomplish anything. And ever if you do hurt or kill a police officer, you will make every other cop in the country hate you and will hunt you down.
Not that the obsession with hitting hard targets is a bad thing mind you. Attacking people that can shoot back is not a good strategy. Especially if your goal is to spread terror. Trying to kill someone and failing spectacularly is not going to spread terror. If anything it makes people feel safer.
And the fact is, that in America there really aren't any soft targets left. There are only a few places left where if you start attacking people there won't be someone there with a gun there to shoot you within minutes. Even schools usually have a police officer in them these days. Our cops are armed and our civilians are even more well armed.
America just isn't as vulnerable to these kinds of attacks as Europe is. Just compare the Charlie Hebdo attacks to the attack on the Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas. In Franc they were able to kill everyone they wanted to kill and weren't really confronted until they got into their hostage situation. In Texas, all they accomplished was to slightly wound a security guard before the cops shot them. You can argue about what system is better to live under until you are blue in the face but you can't argue that Europe is better prepared for mass casualty shootings and stabbings then America is.
And we have a lot of experience in responding to theses things. Though the Islamic extremism angle is new, crazy people trying to kill as many people as they can isn't. Our long experience with school shooters and cop killers has hardened us. I think everyone in America has a plan on what to do if some maniac goes on a spree. Our police and emergency services certainly do.
None of this is to say that these Islamic extremists are not a threat. Just because they have failed up until this point does not mean that they will fail in the future. And even if they continue to fail to live up to their expectations, people can still get hurt or killed. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, other then eternal vigilance.
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