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Thursday, April 25, 2013

American Terror Attacks

     So while reading the various articles about the Boston Bombing, I have seen literally 1000's of comments that essentially say that Muslims are all terrorists and that Muslims are responsible for all the horrible acts of terror performed on American soil.  The suggestions for how to deal with this perceived problem range from "Send them all back where they came from" to other much less pleasant ideas.  So it made me curious as to how many terrorist attacks there have actually been on US Soil and exactly who perpetrated them.  The results did not surprise me, but may surprise many others out there.
    For my research, I omitted any acts that resulted in or were an attempt to end the life of a single man or woman.  I also left out any references to "persons unknown."  I also kept it to the 20th and 21st century even though there are many acts of terror that date back much further than that.  The number of attacks were staggering even omitting single man assassination attempts/successes.  Even more staggering was the simple fact that the Overwhelming Number of these attacks that were not carried out by Muslims.
     Everyone remembers 9/11 and everyone should.  It was one of the most horrific moments in US history.  Pretty sure everyone remembers the Oklahoma City Bombing too.  However, there have been so many more that people either have not heard of or have forgotten and the vast majority of these were carried out by non-Muslims.
Examples
1)  2010 March 4: 2010 Pentagon shooting occurred on March 4, 2010, when John Patrick Bedell shot and wounded two Pentagon police officers at a security checkpoint in the Pentagon station of the Washington Metro mass-transit system in Arlington County, Virginia.
2)   2009 May 25: 17-year old Kyle Shaw sets off a crude explosive device at a Starbucks at East 92nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, shattering windows and destroyed a bench at the coffee shop. There were no injuries. The attack was a "bizarre tribute" of the movie Fight Club, in an attempt to emulate "Project Mayhem", a series of assaults on corporate America portrayed in the film. Shaw took a plea agreement and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in November 2010.  (had to include this one because I loath Starbucks)
3)  2008 July 27: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting: Jim David Adkisson enters the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a shotgun, killing two and injuring several congregants before being tackled to the ground. Adkisson stated to the police and in a manifesto that he desired to kill Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. Adkisson pled guilty to the crime in February 2009 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole
4)   2001 September 18 - November: 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax kill five across the U.S., with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide.[38] On August 6, 2008, the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks, and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro-choice views.
5)   1996 July 27: Centennial Olympic Park bombing by Eric Robert Rudolph occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Atlanta Olympics. One person was killed and 111 injured. In a statement released in 2005 Rudolph said the motive was to protest abortion and the "global socialist" Olympic Movement.
     There are many many more examples 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States if you are interested in reading about all of them)  and don't me wrong, there is a sizable number of these attacks that are carried out by Muslims or People who might have been Muslim since the article doesn't give the Religious Affiliations for all of the attackers.  However, there is a huge number of attackers that are White, Hispanic etc.  Hells, the majority of them are not Muslims.
     It is okay to be pissed off at any Terrorists who harm our own and destroy our lives.  However, we should never be mad at all of one group because a small faction of it commits a crime.  We don't get pissed at all WASPs if one walks into a building and opens fire.   The Sandy Hook Shooter was as American as Apple Pie, but no one is saying all Americans are evil Terrorists.  Get pissed at the Criminals, never the people.
End of rant

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