Times Square car bomber issues an ominous warning

Pakistan-born American citizen Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty Monday to 10 terrorism and weapons counts stemming from his failed plot to kill Americans in New York’s Times Square, but there was no apology for the death and destruction that would have occurred had the homemade car bomb exploded.

Instead, Shahzad, 30, who has lived in this country since he was 18 and became a citizen last year, used his court appearance to rail against U.S. foreign policy in “Muslim lands” and to issue a warning that the Obama administration cannot ignore.

“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” he told Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. “I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier.” And he added this: Until U.S. forces leave Muslim territory, “we will be attacking U.S.”

The American-trained financial analyst and married father of two described matter-of-factly how he was trained in 2009, just three months after becoming a citizen, by Pakistani Taliban to build bombs and then returned to the U.S. to launch his attack. The purpose, he said, was to avenge attacks on Muslims by American forces overseas.

When Judge Cedarbaum asked him whether he realized that his victims in Times Square would have included children, Shahzad replied: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill everybody. It’s a war, and in a war they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”

The Obama administration has acknowledged that missile strikes by unmanned drones in Afghanistan have resulted in civilian deaths and injuries, but the president and military commanders have made it clear that the population at large is not being targeted. The NATO-led forces are in Afghanistan as part of the war on global terrorism. They are going after the Taliban, al-Qaida and other Islamic groups that are determined to topple the democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai and return the country to Islamic rule. It was from Afghanistan, during the iron-fisted rule of the Taliban, that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrrorist organization launched the attacks on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001, that claimed more than 3,000 lives.

Bin Laden and members of his inner circle have succeeded in eluding capture or death and are said to be holed up in the mountainous tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Pakistan has joined the U.S. and its coalition partners in the war on global terrorism, but the drone attacks that have killed civilians have put the central government in a precarious position. Likewise, President Karzai has urged the Obama administration to take great care because the civilian death toll is turning the public against the United States.

Hearts and minds

In his statement in court, Shahzad offered this observation that should prompt the administration to take another look at its campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan: “I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attack. Living in the United States. Americans only care about their own people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.”

The notion that troops from the U.S. and other countries are in Afghanistan and Iraq as invaders and occupiers is ridiculous, and yet a growing number of Afghans, Iraqis and even Pakistanis are buying into it. That’s because the coalition has done a poor job of clearly conveying to the people of the region what’s at stake, what’s being accomplished and what will ultimately occur once the troop pullout begins.

The governments in the three countries should take the lead in explaining to their people why the presence of foreign troops is so essential and why this is not an attack on Islam or Muslim lands.