The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.
I, for one, am glad to see that the Sun is selling enough advertisements to necessitate the abbreviation of wire stories. But I was disappointed to see that the piece in today's paper ("Man arrested on terror charges," page A10) relating the arrest of one Zachary Adam Chesser failed to mention the infamy he earned by threatening the creators of South Park for their depiction of Muhammad.
No doubt Chesser's alleged association with notable terrorist figures like Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hassan had earned him a spot on the no-fly list (and a federal wiretap) before he put Trey Parker and Matt Stone in his sights. His defenders at the time tried to portray him as a harmless blogger, parroting his statement that he was simply observing (rather than threatening) that Parker and Stone might end up like murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
Chesser was picked up at JFK earlier this month when he allegedly tried to fly to Somalia in order to join up with the terrorist organization al-Shabaab, presumably not in the role of harmless blogger. Indeed, according to his own statements to FBI investigators, Chesser traveled with his infant son in order to deflect suspicion. Anyone who has attempted air travel with an infant knows that you don't do this unless you absolutely, positively, have to be there on an airplane. So clearly the guy was pretty serious.
What's especially sobering about this story is that Chesser is all of 20 years old. According to his interviews with the FBI, Chesser's commitment to the violent propagation of Islam was in considerable flux during the exactly two years between when he became interested in Islam and when he set off to another continent to join a terrorist organization. At times he was personally committed to violence, at times he was opposed; at times, Cuomo-esque, he supported others' violence but didn't want to perpetrate it himself.At one point, Chesser indicated that his blogging efforts were directed not at encouraging "specific acts of violence," but merely "general and ambiguous acts of violence." Clearly, the al-Shabaab farm team is not being recruited from the deep end of the gene pool. But idiots can still do damage, as the Ravens secondary learns every time it lines up across from Ben Roethlisberger. This is one citizen who sleeps a little sounder knowing that our nation's law enforcement personnel are handling these threats to our security appropriately.
