Did you know that San Francisco experienced a terrorist attack yesterday?
Yup! Ask any number of hard-right bloggers. (Here and here are a couple of memeorandum links so I don’t have to hook into this fiasco.)
The story, apparently, is that a man got into his vehicle and started deliberately hitting pedestrians with it. When all was said and done, there was one person dead and 14 injured.
A day of hit-and-run horror that started with the death of a Fremont pedestrian and erupted into half an hour of chaos on the streets of San Francisco ended in the arrest of a 29-year-old driver described by some relatives as mentally disturbed but by police as apparently rational and unrepentant.
At least 14 people were hospitalized Tuesday in San Francisco after the driver of a black 2004 Honda Pilot cut a path of destruction from the Tenderloin to Laurel Heights, striking pedestrians and a bicyclist in 13 locations starting at about 12:45 p.m.
According to an astounding number of bloggers, this qualifies as “a terrorist attack” because the man is Afghani, and the rampage ended near the Jewish Community Center (in front of which he also hit two people…).
Let’s assume, just for the sake of the argument, that the man was deliberately targeting Jewish people. If that’s true, then one might not be unreasonable to suggest anti-Semitism. With that assumption, one might even go further and say that this man’s crimes fall under the classic definition of a hate crime.
One might also speculate that anyone who gets into his car and starts hitting people with it has lost his mind.
But the hyperventilating ravers calling this a “terror attack in San Francisco” are playing pretty loose these days with some terminology.
Or are they planning to reclassify all murderous haters “terrorists”?
And before somebody else brings it up: Right after the incident, the man is alleged to have called himself a terrorist.
Okay then… and I’m the Queen of Sheba.
* * * * *
Happily, everyone hasn’t lost their heads over this. Others blogging from this side of sanity include:
the heretik: Dumb and Dumber Update
Outside the Beltway: Omeed Aziz Popal Kills One, Injures 14 in Vehicle Rampage
Update Aug 31: Go figure:
By around noon, police say, Popal — who has a history of mental problems — was so enraged he jumped in his family’s black sports utility vehicle and began a rampage. He plowed through pedestrians up and over sidewalks, police say, leaving one man dead in Fremont and 14 others injured in San Francisco.
[snip]
The cousin said he found out after the rampage, when the family gathered at a relative’s house, that Popal had been hospitalized for mental problems two or three times over the summer.