Matt McHugh.com - Blog - May 2010

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The recent failed truck bomb in Times Square brings up a number of interesting ideas: How vulnerable we are to such things. How impossible they are to prevent. How much video survellience is in place in this country. How lone cranks are often more motivated to act than organized movements. How tricky it is to actually make a decent bomb.

However, the thing that gets me most is this kid who tried to pull it off. And he does just seem like, well, such a kid. I know he's 30 but he looks and, from the initial profile info, seems to have the mindset of a disgruntled teen. Hell, he tried to firebomb a truck. That's like what every pyromaniac adolescent boy does. You spend your childhood building models, and one glorious summer when you're 13 blowing them up with firecrackers.

I don't mean to be glib about a very potentially dangerous scenario, but I find it so hard to see anything like ideology behind an "attack" like this. All I see is the rather predictable, manipulable mindset of a geeky kid trying desperately to be cool. I suppose that's what really makes it so dangerous: they'll always be kids like him, just waiting to be exploited.

-- mm