Here’s the front page of the Huffington Post as of a few minutes ago:
“Motive Still a Mystery.” Wow! Will they ever figure out why a recently naturalized Pakistani-American named Faisal Shahzad would want to build a car bomb and try to set it off in Times Square?
The New York Post (of course!) is jumping to conclusions based on nothing but evidence:
It was payback.
The Connecticut man charged yesterday with the botched Times Square car bombing confessed to trying to slaughter innocent people in retaliation for US drone attacks that wiped out the leadership of his beloved Taliban, The Post has learned.
Admitted terrorist Faisal Shahzad — who copped to training in explosives in the past year with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the leading extremist Islamic group in his native Pakistan — said he was driven to evil by the slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group, law-enforcement sources revealed yesterday.
But wait. Aren’t we still doing drone strikes even though Bush isn’t in office anymore? Didn’t Obama even make a joke about it, the very same night of the attempted bombing?
Obviously, Shahzad isn’t a fan of hilarious comedy. Maybe that’s why he tried to do to Times Square what the Jonas Brothers have done to modern music.
Or, the Associated Press themselves provide a possible clue to Shahzad’s motive:
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Shahzad had been providing valuable information to investigators as they sought to determine the scope of the plot to blow up the SUV last Saturday night in the heart of Times Square near bustling restaurants and a theater showing “The Lion King.”
Hey, who doesn’t hate what they’ve done to Broadway? Or maybe he’s a disgruntled ex-Disneyworld employee? It gets so hot and sweaty in that Goofy costume, and then they fire you just for chastising the young girls who walk around with more than 5% of their epidermis showing while unescorted by a male relative.
Other than that, I can’t think of a single, solitary motive. If only there were some sort of pattern we could discern, based on decades of hard evidence and simple common sense. Doesn’t seem too likely to me. The reasons behind this attempt at mass murder will remain a mystery, now that we know the culprit isn’t a teabagger.
P.S. Whoops, I missed one possible motive. Courtesy of Michael Moynihan at Reason:
Just another in a long line of NYC bombers spurred to action by the mortgage crisis?