Terrorist Attack Thwarted

I've been thinking about what to say in a post such as this since I first heard the news on Friday night that authorities had arrested 17 people in a counterterrorism action. I've also been waiting for some details to emerge as to the specifics of what happened. Now that some more information has been made available, it's a little easier to discuss it and what it means. First, the facts:

+ 17 people were arrested, including 5 minors
+ All of the people arrested were Canadians
+ They had procured 3 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, the same material used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing -- but three times the amount

That Canada nearly became the victim of a "homegrown" terrorist act should shock and jar a lot of people out of their complacency in the War on Terror. For too long comments such as "soft target" or "it could never happen here because we're not in Iraq" have been thrown around. This quote from Jack Layton epitomizes everything that is wrong with the mentality of some Canadians: "The idea that people would be planning a bombing in our country is simply shocking."
If you read this message from 12 November 2002, it wouldn't be. If you were aware that bin Laden links supporters of the Afghanistan war to his list of targets, it wouldn't be. But this is Jack Layton, and I've wasted enough time talking about him already, so I'll turn my focus to serious people.

I truly hope that a lot of Canadians will wake up and realize that we are neither a soft target nor are we beyond the scope of potential targets for Osama bin Laden and his followers. He's publicly made known a list of 20 states that are targets for their efforts in Afghanistan or their general support of the United States. 18 of those states have been attacked by al Qaeda. Canada is one of the two that has not. Was this foiled plot a first attempt to make Canada #19? At this point, we don't know. CSIS and the authorities involved are rightly not leaking too much information on this case; national security trumps the "right to know" at this early stage.
The dynamic of the plotters all being Canadian citizens is deeply troubling. As was the case with the London bombings, that all the participants were domestic--not foreign--terrorists, this is a great source of concern because it demonstrates that even in democracies where freedoms are granted to all citizens, there will be those citizens who seek to exploit those freedoms for dark ends. As the people from CSIS said yesterday, “Any movement that has the ability to turn people against their fellow citizens is obviously something that CSIS is very concerned about.” These people have somehow been brainwashed into giving up their liberties and freedoms enjoyed in Canada to carry out acts inspired by an ideology that has no place for either, relying on false promises of heaven and glory in the afterlife for murdering innocent civilians.
It is disheartening to me on a personal level that our Prime Minister and counterterrorism officials have to tell people that "Canada is not immune" to attack from al Qaeda or those inspired by al Qaeda. Knowing as much as I do about bin Laden's network (and I don't think I could classify myself as an "expert" on them; I've simply read a few books on them) and his intentions, Canada is a natural enemy of al Qaeda. Far from being "immune," our beliefs and our actions have made us almost-certain candidates. To hear people be surprised to hear CSIS folks say that an attack is "not a question of if, but when," that suggests that we simply haven't taken the necessary steps to make the public aware of the threat that we are susceptible to from al Qaeda.
This is not to suggest that government officials go out of their way to instill fear in Canadians. But it does mean that they should tell Canadians on a regular basis to remain vigilant to protect our democracy from attack by those who do not believe in it. The arrests in this plot should not be seen as some form of anachronism, but as a harbinger. Bin Laden is notoriously determined to succeed in achieving his goals against his targets. That's why they went back to the World Trade Centre in 2001 after failing to achieve maximum destruction in 1993. If this was, in fact, an al Qaeda plot, there will be a second attempt. I'm not trying to scare the hell out of anybody, but to prepare them for what may yet be to come. The last line of our national anthem is so beautiful, so moving, and truly central to what we must do to protect our democracy and our citizens: "O Canada we stand on guard for thee."