Location, location.

Does this look familiar to anyone? It is a picture taken shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing that was eventually tied to a American militia movement sympathizer. The attack claimed 168 lives and destroyed an entire United States federal building. Lets look a little more recently. Does anybody recall on February 18th of this year, Joseph Stack flew a small plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas? How about the shooting of two Unitarian Church members who were antagonized for having liberal social beliefs?

These events have nowhere near the gravity of incidents of international terrorism in the United States in our current media. The Times Square bomb plot of 2010 attracted so much media and political attention, it is worth thinking about more serious threats that exist within our own borders. The bomb plot in question killed nobody. Imagine if the Muhammad Omar flew a small plane into a federal building instead of Joseph Stack. The reaction would be enormous. Imagine if an Iraqi politician put gun targets on freshman Democratic representatives as part of his campaign. My point is that the reaction would be completely different.

Freaking out about international terrorism is a convenient way to distract the public from pressing issues within the United States such as right-wing violence, but it is not even close as dangerous as right wing extremism at home. What should happen within our politics is that all acts of terrorism should be treated with equal attention, no matter where they originated. A white southerner killing 5 people is just as invidious as Muhammad Omar doing the same. It complicates things when southern white extremists constitute the political base of one of our major political parties. That is a different matter, however.