AP News Flash: They Aren’t Mad About Abu Ghraib After All

Speaking of alleged terror plots, AP writer Paul Haven has this light to shed on the equally significant terrorist bust in Denmark this week:

A pair of alleged Islamic terror plots uncovered this week in Germany and Denmark share some disturbing hallmarks: Officials link both to al-Qaida and have found tentacles stretching all the way to Pakistan, the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden. (“Foiled Terror Plots Share Hallmarks”).

As I complained elsewhere about the use of the term "alleged," everything in this paragraph makes some sense except Haven’s eccentric use of the phrase “alleged Islamic terror plots,” which I find confusing.

Which element is it that is supposed to be only alleged? Is it allegedly Islamic? Is it allegedly terrorist? Allegedly a plot? Or perhaps, (and it isn’t so far-fetched), is it only an allegation that the territories in which the plots were discovered are still going to be known as “Germany” and “Denmark”?

Meanwhile, David McHugh, Haven’s colleague at AP, wrote his report on the German (alleged) terror plot , (“Germans Arrest 3 in Alleged Terror Plot”), with a bit more common sense:

Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.

Islamic radicals "treat the whole Western world as their enemy," said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.

I’d like to hear more from Taduesz, but that’s all the AP had room for.

But why exactly do we all need a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies, and that they treat the whole Western world as their enemy?

Could it be because of all the ink that’s been spilled by the Western press endlessly repeating that the only reason for the anger of Islamic radicals has been the US and its policies?

If you read through Haven’s account from Denmark you see he’s still sticking with the "classic" anti-American viewpoint on the plots:

The schemes - which could have caused massive loss of life - have been a chilling reminder to Europeans of the threat they still face due to porous borders, restive minorities and perceived allegiance to the United States.

Now doesn't that make more sense than simply tarring an entire religion of peace as enemies of the West? "Bad Europeans. Not only are you friends with the USA (I thought the whole world hated us?), but your porous borders also suck in millions of us from Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East, after which our refusal either to assimilate or go home again makes us unhappy--in fact, it makes us positively restive. I’m so restive right now I could spit! Or blow up some Europeans."

Haven keeps trying to make sense of this:

While Europe and the United States have diverged - often sharply - on issues such as Iraq, the creation of the U.S. holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA's use of secret prisons for terror suspects, it is Europe that has found itself the victim of more terror attacks since Sept. 11.

Journalists like Haven still seem puzzled that the facts don't fit the theory, even when their profession puts them in the way of security experts and analysts who point out the obvious to them all the time: the obvious being that Islam doesn’t hate us because of Abu Ghraib, but because of who we are.

As Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center said recently, “the political goal of radical Islam is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture…That the Quran calls for Muslims to subjugate the world, especially Christians and Jews, is a fact that anyone can look up.”