Personally, I was fascinated, not over the question of whether he was a terrorist or not, but because of the seemingly capricious conclusion everyone reached that he *wasn’t*.

There are young men and women blowing themselves up all over the world after leaving pointed references to larger political motivations and/or sympathies with militant groups for doing so behind, that are instantly reported as terrorists within a single news cycle. We read about them all the time on page 10A or as a blip on some RSS news feed.

So, at the time, I was like, wow, if we can give this kid the benefit of emotional and psychological doubt, why don’t we do the same for people who try to bring down jetliners with shoe bombs? I mean, which is it? Do “terrorists” with the villainous characterizations so adamantly applied beforehand in situations very similar exist, or don’t they? For instance, should we have started looking at the medications of all the 9/11 hijackers to see if any might explain their irrational logic?

The Bishop incident made one thing clear. When pressed by the reality of familiarity, the local media and many support groups take someone who the FBI, frankly, would have no problem otherwise classifying as a lone wolf actor in any distant prosecution, as a sensitive young man with emotional and psychological problems instead. Make no mistake, that compassion and understanding are great. But that’s the very problem for the bigger question involving countless others. To some degree they’re ALL probably just sensitive young people with emotional and mental problems, or at least there’s always some gray area of note. But you would never figure that in the propaganda used to support the framework of the declared war on terror that demands that people “like” Charlie Bishop know exactly what they’re doing if no one close enough to the situation is there to speak for them like you and I might for Bishop. The second tragedy, the one of war propaganda on our perception of the world, is inadvertently exposed by the first one – and yeah, I for one found that a little jolting at the time.

-D

If this kid committed a terrorist act, why don’t we treat every suicide or ever assault as a terrorist act?