They Were Such Good Boys

The New York Times headlines that religion was a guiding force for at least three of the six men accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Fort Dix and other military installations in the region. At least that's what the headline reads. The article itself offers up a melange of apologia though there are some folks within the Albanian community who can't believe that someone would do such a thing against the US, which did so much for them to stop the violence in Kosavo.

No report would be complete without some relative wondering if this was a conspiracy or plot to get them.

“It’s fine to be a religion man,” said Murat Duka, 55, a distant relative of the defendants who was the first of the Dukas — now numbering about 200 — to move to the Northeast and work as a roofer. “But if you get too much to the religion, you get out of your mind and you do stupid things.”

More than 4,600 miles away is Debar, a village near the Albanian border, where the influence of American émigrés is seen in restaurants named Manhattan, Dallas and Miami. In Debar, Elez Duka, a first cousin of the three suspects, expressed disbelief Wednesday that they could be involved in a scheme inspired by Islamic radicals.

“This has to be political propaganda,” said Mr. Duka, 29, who recently opened an Internet cafe there with money sent by his own brothers in America. “America has always helped us.”

The wife of one of the plotters also believes this was a setup:

Dritan Duka - a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from what is now Macedonia - seemed like the average American dad, working hard for his family, playing with his five kids and participating in sports with his pals, said his Brooklyn-born wife, Jennifer Marino.

"He works as a roofer all day long. He comes home tired and then he takes the kids to the park. I don't know when he would have had time to plan this. I believe he was set up," she told The Post. "Everything they are saying is not true."

Although her husband and his two brothers, Eljvir, 23, and Shain, 26 - who have also been charged in the sinister terror plot - are religious, she said they never talked about politics and were nonviolent people.

The denial that surrounds the realization that people that close to you can think about committing such violence is common. You see it when someone murders someone else out of the blue or the nice guy down the street turns out to be a serial killer. No one expects it, yet there it is.

I also get the feeling that the Duka brothers are going to try and portray themselves as being duped by Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, and perhaps cut a deal.

The Star Ledger examines the idea of homegrown terrorism, but the thing is that we've seen homegrown terrorists for quite some time - including those who commit terrorism in the name of Islam. However, the problem is that they do not directly link back to al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups but are instead compelled to commit terrorism purely on the violent ideology:

In just the past two years, there have been several high-profile arrests in terror conspiracies apparently seeded within the United States, some bearing the hallmarks of the Fort Dix case: groups of young men acting on little more than anger, and undone by informers long before they could take action.

Last June, seven men were arrested in Miami on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. None had any known connection to a terrorism group.

That same month, Canadian authorities arrested 17 Muslim men said to be planning to storm Parliament, take hostages and behead the prime minister.

In February 2006, three people were arrested in Ohio, accused of plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

All of the plots were thwarted, some by sheer happenstance.

"What we are witnessing here is kind of a brand new form of terrorism," Jody Weis, special agent in charge of the FBI's Philadelphia field office, said in announcing the arrests Tuesday. He said threats today come from smaller, more loosely defined cells and individuals who may not be affiliated with al Qaeda but "are inspired by their violent ideology."

Of course, we continue to get folks who dismiss the idea that someone might try to attack US military installations in a terrorist plot. Keith Olbermann, here's looking at you kid. Maybe you forget that little incident on 9/11 where terrorists tried to destroy the Pentagon with a plane. That was an attack on a military installation too. Just think what would happen if the terrorists managed to successfully carry out the attack on Fort Dix. What would happen then? People like Keith would turn around and proclaim that the war on terror is lost, demand the troops be brought home, and demand more security.

Instead, a conscientious store clerk saw something out of the ordinary, informed law enforcement, and got the ball rolling on uncovering a plot that would have serious ramifications if it had come to fruition.

UPDATE:
They were such good boys that one of them was driving around with bomb recipes in his car and referred to Osama as "Uncle Benny."

"He also, at times, would say things that you would think that, 'This guy can't be all there,' but I dismissed them as jokes," the former co-worker, Bob Watts, told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Watts said he and Agron Abdullahu worked together at bakery for more than two years and were "like brothers."

"He was an easygoing guy, made you laugh all the time, he was somebody you really enjoyed working with," Watts said.

Abdullahu sometime made jokes about how the United States couldn't find bin Laden, saying, "U.S., no matter what they do, cannot catch my Uncle Benny," Watts said. He said Abdullahu also showed him bomb recipes that he had in his car.

He said he warned Abdullahu, "you have to watch yourself this day and age, with 9/11, you're going to get yourself into a lot trouble." But Watts said he never saw anything to indicate that his friend hated the country.

UPDATE:
One of the stories that isn't getting as much coverage is the whereabouts of the other four men present at the firing range with the six already in custody. It would appear that the FBI has been keeping tabs on them, but doesn't have sufficient evidence at present to arrest them, though the investigations are continuing (HT: Michelle Malkin)

UPDATE:
Here come the inevitable claims of worry about backlash and that the media and law enforcement need to change their focus instead of on the Islamic jihadis who are consistently behind these terrorist plots.

Authorities’ description of six suspects charged with plotting an attack on Fort Dix as “Islamic militants” is causing renewed worry among New Jersey’s Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslim men from New Jersey were rounded up and detained by authorities in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but none were connected to that plot. Now, Muslims fear a resurgence of anti-Islamic sentiment and incidents of bias.

“If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. “But when the government says ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous. Don’t equate actions with religion.”

The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee’s New Jersey chapter participated in a conference call Tuesday with FBI officials to discuss security matters. “What we’re all afraid of is a new backlash,” said Hesham Mahmoud, a spokesman for the group.

There was no first backlash, and there certainly isn't a new backlash now either. After 9/11 there were arrests of people who were here illegally, and many of them were within the Muslim community because of their ties, or suspected ties to the 9/11 hijackers, some of whom actually passed through New Jersey on their way to carrying out the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history. That's not a backlash, but enforcing the law.

There are parts of New Jersey that have been hotbeds for radical Islamists for years - Paterson and Jersey City come to mind. From those cauldrons came the 1993 WTC bombers, the NYC landmark bomb plotters, the 9/11 hijackers came calling in New Jersey, and more recently the PATH tunnel bombers, just to name a few.

These communities do little to rid themselves of the most radical elements, and instead claim that there's going to be problems if the media highlights the religious nature of the terror plotters and law enforcement continue their efforts to crack Islamic terror plots. They claim discrimination and racism will occur, yet there's no evidence that any such events have occurred.

UPDATE:
Looks like I got a media mention in the Star Ledger for my post on this subject yesterday. Thanks for stopping by and reading my humble blog.