FBI makes another terrorist

It's the second time this year the FBI has taken a young aspiring terrorist - and turned him into one.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud clearly had dreams of being a jihadist and bringing devastation onto Americans, but his attempts to sign into a terrorist training camp got nowhere. No problem; the FBI stepped in and helped him make his fantasies a reality - even assisting him in building a (fake) bomb.

I'm not a legal scholar, but it seems there should be a difference between dreaming about a crime and actually perpetrating one. Many disaffected youth imagine pulling off criminal acts but don't go through with it - whether because they lack the means, the cojones or the will to ultimately do so. If the NYPD was in the business of making every juvenile's criminal fantasies come true we'd double the occupancy of Rikers. But the NYPD - I hope - is interested in making fewer criminals, not more.

Why is the FBI different? Clearly, the stakes are higher. Wanting to pull off a drug deal or store heist is not the same as aiming to murder hundreds of innocents at a shot. But I'm not sure that - considerable - distinction really makes a difference.

The media all report that Mohamed was dead set on his intentions to bomb a gathering of Portland Christmas revelers and that not even the FBI agent's concern that he might kill children would deter him. What the media doesn't point out is that Mohamed was expressing his determination to someone he believed was a fellow terrorist, and perhaps even someone he looked to as a mentor. That person, of course, was an FBI agent acting the part. We don't know exactly what the FBI agent said to Mohamed, but as they say, actions speak stronger than words and this agent was helping Mohamed to plan a terrorist attack.

Up until the moment the FBI called Mohamed to help him orchestrate an act of terror, Mohamed was on his own. But when the FBI moved in to act as Mohamed's accomplice he stopped acting alone. Sure, as a human being, he always had free will to continue or stop his plans - but would he have gone through with them without the support of the FBI? If I stopped to think about how many ideas and plans I've had - and even eagerly wanted to accomplish - but have done nothing with, I'd be writing a list all day. We can never be certain how likely Mohamed would have bombed a public square in Portland if it had not been for the FBI, but we can surely say the likelihood was less than 100%.

Again, without being a legal scholar, this surely must be the reasoning behind why entrapment is a no-no. It recognizes that we rarely act as lone wolves - but that our actions are almost always subject to encouragement and discouragement.

So why are we encouraging terrorism?

Update: Glenn Greenwald at Salon and Ted Conover at Slate also question the FBI's terrorist baiting practices.