Authorities are trying to piece together the motivation and psyche of the alleged Times Square bomber, to determine what turned Faisal Shahzad from ordinary guy to bomb-toting radical. Today's Washington Post quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official as saying that the process was gradual, and took years.
That statement brought me back to "The Attack," a novel that my book club read recently. It's a tale of an Arab doctor who lives in Israel, and finds that his wife -- outwardly a model citizen in all respects -- is a suspect in a suicide bombing. The accusation leads the doctor on a quest to find the truth, and on the way, he must confront the conflicting political philosophies that have embroiled the Middle East for decades. I'm not sure there are any real answers in the book, but the characters' dialogue is riveting.
Interestingly, the issue arises as media reports recall the campus uprisings of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Young Americans were radicalized by the wars in Asia and violent including affluent, white kids -- took a more desperate approach, bombing campus buildings and police stations. It seems almost incongruous in today's America, doesn't it? But it's happening in other places around the world, and Shahzad may be another example of the deadly process of radicalization.