Faisal Shahzad, the U.S. citizen accused of attempting to bomb Times Square, made a laughably inept attempt at a jihadist attack, writes Sahanand Dhume in The Wall Street Journal. Not only was his "car bomb" seemingly designed by Wile E. Coyote, he left a paper trail so obvious authorities tracked him down in less than 48 hours. But for every Shahzad, there's a Mohamed Atta, "another privileged young man educated in the West and drawn to radical Islam." It does not pay to ignore that threat, warns Dhume. An excerpt:
"On the face of it, the sloppiness of Mr. Shahzad and his ilk ought to be welcome. Who in his right mind would prefer a terrorist threat metastasizing among punctilious Japanese, hard-charging South Koreans, or the relentless Vietnamese? But there's also a downside to someone like Mr. Shahzad transitioning seamlessly from a smoking SUV to the late-night routines of Jon Stewart and Jay Leno. It inadvertently bolsters those who pooh-pooh radical Islam—the sharia-minded version of the faith that spawns jihadists around the world—as a threat not worth taking seriously.
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