We can dismiss Mehanna’s writings as the angry ranting of an arrested homegrown jihadi but lest we forget that he turned into a pop sensation in the online forums after going to prison. When Mehanna speaks, hundreds of English-language online supporters listen. He’s a good barometer of the mood of Western online types, in large part b/c he helps set the agenda and talking points.
Disingenuous and Shameful
by Tariq Mehanna
Here we go again. As the time-tested formula goes, they send an undercover agent to an unsuspecting naivete to fire him up. Then at the right stage, they begin secretly recording the conversations with the agent to nail down enough quotes to beef up the planned indictment. Then they buy him weapons. Then they swoop in to “foil the terror plot” – their own terror plot – just in time to prevent him from using the weapons … thatthey bought him! Then they announce that another “homegrown terrorist” has been caught red-handed trying to “kill Americans,” but that the “public was never in any danger” because “the plot was being closely monitored by authorities at at all times” (the term ‘closely monitored’ is a euphemism for ‘orchestrated & sustained’). Then the public reacts in shock that such a person could be “in our midst.”
And such is the classic script. Disingenuous on the part of the American government, and shameful on the part of the American public that buys into the government’s deception and allows this to keep happening.
I’d like to ask the FBI agents who work these cases: do you feel a genuine sense of fulfillment? Do you truly consider yourselves to be on a noble endeavor? By manufacturing artificial “plots” to compensate for a lack of authentic ones, do you honestly consider yourselves heroic vanguards of the homeland? On the frontlines of the ‘War on Terror’? Setting aside my understandable bias, this still seems anything but noble. Rather, it seems nothing but dishonorable and unscrupulous that with 14 million Americans so poor that they’re officially considered to be in poverty, and over twice as many unable to find work with which to feed their hungry families, and over three times as many unable to afford even basic health care, and public schools unable to pay their teachers or renovate their buildings, and with the entire economy so devastated and in shambles, somehow, the cash endlessly & magically materializes from your tax dollars to instead be used by the FBI to generate “terror plots” where there were no plots, to destroy the lives & families of people who wouldn’t & couldn’t have “plotted” anything without the coaxing and assistance of the very government agents who arrested them … all to perpetuate the public fear that justifies an ever-increasing annual budget that allows the Feds to foil more of their own “plots,” in an endless Catch-22.
Disingenuous on the part of the American government, and shameful on the part of the American public that buys into their deception and allows this to keep happening. It’s baffling how almost all the reporting on this case willfully ignores the fact that it was the FBI agents who actively facilitated the “plot,” as opposed to merely “discovering” it.
But I should credit the government. At least this time, the charges match the accusations. It’s a step up from my own case where nearly two years after my face was splashed across the news as the ‘Shopping Mall Shooter,’I have yet to be charged with being part of any “terror plot” – shopping mall or otherwise. Even though I’m quickly approaching trial, I have yet to be told by the U.S. government which mall I was going to supposedly attack, or when I was going to attack it, or what evidence exists that this ever happened. And you don’t even want to know how many millions of tax dollars have been and will continue to be snatched up by the government to put me on trial and keep me locked up. It is quite a hefty sum.
