London and Glasgow Terror Plots

CBS news reports that the plotters were recruited by AQ in Iraq.

This event strikes me as rather significant on several levels. When I first heard about it, I was surprised that highly educated medical professionals with decent jobs would be willing to engage in terrorism. In the past, there have been highly intelligent terrorists, namely Mohammed Atta...who acted as ringleaders for big plots, but most of the guys involved were idiots. The most notable example being Richard Reid, the half retarded shoe bomber. I can see a fanatic like Atta, a dedicated and celebrated jihadist throwing his entire life into the jihadist cause. It gave him purpose, meaning, celebrity, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Perhaps he could not achieve any such fame or glory in any other profession. And I can see how idiots can be talked into anything, including blowing themselves up.

Additionally, I even understand the home grown terrorists, second generation immigrants feeling ostracized in their home countries turning to radical acts of violence in a late teen, early adult thrashing out of displaced masculine values. They see the news get crazy ideas and influences from terrorists. These types are not dissimilar from the Columbine shooters in America.

But this third group, the group caught in London and Glasgow, is a bit worrisome to me because I don't quite understand them. Here are guys with lives and professions who presumably get some type of satisfaction from their work and seem to be doing fine and well in their adopted country. They are obviously all rational, intelligent human beings, and must be able to see through the transparency of the stupid jihadists. Fine, they have a beef with Britain and probably the West at large, but they must share a similar beef with a silly ideology like Jihad. But furthermore - even if push cames to shove and they would choose Jihad over the West - committing to an act of terror (and a relatively small one at that), almost seems not worth their talents. This strikes me as odd and frankly, irrational.

On the last level, they failed. It seems like total dumb luck from the article that the bomb simply didn't go off with the cell phone timer. Hey, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, knowing how often my alarm doesn't go off or my computer stalls or I drop a call. But if I were plotting a terrorist attack, I'd know damn well I got one shot at it and would make damn sure to see it through. These guys failed in that regard.

But anyhow, the CBS report above says they were recruited by AQ in Iraq to infiltrate Britain. This makes more sense to me, that they weren't in Britain by choice, but because of the mission and hence kept their heads down and appeared to be good citizens. This puts them in the Atta category and not some new category of Jihadist style. I'll try to keep up on the story and developments.