The news of the arrest of a Pakistani-American man, in connection with the failed bomb attempt in Times Square, when he was securely buckled in on a flight to Dubai and after the plane had already rolled away from the gate is dramatic enough. The information that he is a US citizen, an immigrant who, according to his neighbors spoke little english, and became a citizen just last year should give Arizona just a little pause for thought. And not just Arizona.
One of the most terrible things about the virulent hostility to immigrants from the southern border is that it dovetails so nicely with the rest of the culture war being fought on the right wing of this fruited plain (a fruited plain by the way which depends on the cheap labor of those same immigrants). The battle really isn't about whether or not immigration is a good thing. The argument is about 'invasion', about being 'over-run', about a long held fear that immigrants from Mexico want to breed the whites among us out of existence, it's about a war of language, culture, borders with the place 'we' fear most. The place we think wants not to integrate among us but overwhelm us with tacos and brown babies until we are forced into the sea. Hell, if we want Mexico, we can drive there. We can get all the child sex, cheap prostitution, overcooked meat, cheap trinkets, underpriced real estate and great unregulated fishing of endangered species right across the border - we need San Diego and Phoenix to stay decent, english speaking, white and expensive goddammit.
So, back to Faisal Shahzad of Connecticut (has a nice ring to it doesn't it?), who presumably got his citizenship and proudly said the Oath of Allegiance having told a bundle of lies to get there. He did this in order to fashion the crudest of car bombs like the cheap terrorist he is, and leave it in a packed Times Square on a Saturday evening to cause massive damage to ordinary human beings and presumably embarrass a Democratic White House which has been roundly criticised for its softly softly approach towards foreign policy (except of course Obama's fondness for unmanned drone attacks on individual terror suspects).
So Shahzad, having gained what thousands of southern immigrants try to accomplish by working at the lowest wages imaginable in some of the toughest conditions possible, becomes a US citizen (this is what the right wing nuts call 'coming here legally') and leaves a deadly bomb and gets on a plane to ... Dubai ... that well known hub of democratic freedoms. Americans have this strange view that if someone becomes a US citizen, they somehow suddenly like apple pie, the American flag and your mother. I'd like to know today what Levin (European Jewish roots), Hannity (Irish roots), and the rest of them have to say about the most recent US citizen to hate Amerika so badly he wanted to use a vehicle packed full of explosives to smash women, men, children apart into little pieces not even big enough to fit into body bags.
Comments