Our Real Domestic Terrorist Problem

As GOP Rep. Peter King of New York gets his show hearing on today about "Radical Islam" in the United States, there are two important points that he won't mention.  First, a vast and overwhelming majority of American Muslims not only want nothing to do with radical anti-Americanism, they are the key to stopping it.
Danger Room's Adam Rawnsley:

But the numbers tell the story of jihadis’ marginality in America in better detail. In a forthcoming report, Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert and senior advisor at the Rand Corporation, updates a previous study on the subject and counts  the number of Muslims in America who’ve participated in jihadist-related crimes from 9/11 through 2010. He shared the results with Danger Room ahead of publication.

181 Muslims have either been indicted, arrested or self-identified (such as through suicide bombings in Somalia) as participating in jihadist-related crimes since 9/11, according to Jenkins’ study. Estimates on the number of Muslims in America  population are numerous and inconsistent; the Pew forum fixes the number at 2.6 million, Jenkins uses a figure of 3 million. In either case, the figure lies between 0.007 to 0.006 percent of American Muslims — an extreme minority in the fullest sense of the words.

“This is half-hearted jihad,” says Jenkins. Even if hundreds or thousands of American-based Muslims support or tolerate the radicals on the sly, it’s still a tiny, tiny percentage of the whole.

Those few Muslims who choose to engage in terrorism still represent a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But their relative position on the fringe of the community yields an important insight as to how this should be undertaken: America’s Muslim community is an obstacle to participation in al-Qaeda’s twisted interpretation of jihad, not a gateway. The logical conclusion is that we must embrace this community in the fight against terrorism rather than undermine it through fear-mongering.

And while some Republicans are quick to demonize all American Muslims (and all Muslims everywhere for that matter) the reality is that the domestic terrorism problem we really do have involves not Muslims, but white supremacist hate groups.

Finally there has been an arrest made in the attempted terrorist bombing of the Spokane, Washington Martin Luther King Day Parade in January, and the suspect is a real doozy.

The man arrested today in Washington State for the attempted MLK Day bombing in Spokane is named Kevin William Harpham. Here's what the Spokane newspaper has found so far:

The Southern Poverty Law Center confirmed that Harpham in 2004 was a member of the National Alliance, which is one of the most visible white supremacist organizations in the nation. It was founded by the late William Pierce, who authored "The Turner Diaries," a novel about a future race war. That book was believed to be the blueprint behind the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh. 

"What to me this arrest suggests is that the Martin Luther King Day attack is what it always looked like: A terror-mass murder attempt directed at black people and their sympathizers," said Mark Potok, who is the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project that tracks and investigates hate groups.

Potok said his organization's records also indicate that Harpham was in the U.S. Army in 1996 and 1997, serving with the 37th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Lewis.

Ex-military white supremacist trying to kill a bunch of Americans, why does that sound familiar?  Oh yeah, and the bomb was specifically targeting African-Americans too.  But Kevin William Harpham?  Strangely, not a Muslim.

But you won't hear anything about this at Rep. King's "blame the Muslims" hearing.  The Spokane bombing story has been spiked since day one.  The story will continue to be spiked, too.  If King was serious about investigating radicalism in the country, he'd have to take a look at hate groups like this.  But that goes against the GOP narrative that there are no racists, only people who are racists for thinking racism still exists in 2011.