Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Concern over possible World Cup terrorism

It almost goes without saying these days, but there's apparently some significant concern over the possibility of terrorist attacks on this month's World Cup games in Germany.

Germany has a large immigrant Muslim population, and there are concerns that a significant minority of this population represents the extreme end of the Islamic spectrum. German Muslims have some of the same complaints about their host society as French Muslims, and there have been a few events recently which have agitated the community.

I have been expecting (and predicting) attacks at many high-profile gatherings since 2001 - the Olympics, the Democratic and Republican Conventions, elections in the US and elsewhere, etc. I've been wrong every time (thankfully), but it still seems like the radical Islamists would have struck somewhere if they had the capability. The fact they have not says to me they can not.

We'll see. No doubt the counter-terrorism folks are not getting much sleep right about now.

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