This thought was reinforced for me on Tuesday while I was watching CNN at the gym. The ever liberal Carol Costello was, as the news guys always do, wondering, with knitted brow of concern, what motive this "normal young student" could possibly have had for committing this act of terror. Though, of course, Carol did not call it that. She just called it an act of violence.
What Ms. Costello just wanted to know was "WHY"? She even had "experts" on air to help her divine the answer to this vexing question. Not surprisingly, they came to no conclusions, after having spent an inordinate amount of time discussing whether or not "WE KNOW" if young Abdul was "actually radicalized".
Well, Carol, I have a headline for you. All you have to do is read the kid's own words! He was feeling overwhelmed in the big pond (don't forget that they didn't give him a room to pray in). And, being so self-absorbed, he apparently missed the TV coverage of ISIS guys blowing up mosques and beheading people every five minutes. Instead, he logged on to some jihadi web sites where he was told how badly he and his coreligionists are treated and how cool it is to be a "lone wolf" soldier of the caliphate. He believed that BS and decided to take action---he did---and so did a campus cop who, fortunately, was more efficient at the action that he took. As a result, lives were saved. Good outcome for what could have been a worse tragedy so let's not waste any more time on the postmortem.