Terror, made in the USA

The details that CNN reported on Tuesday from the investigation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings -- seem to point to a jihadist motive for the attack. Tsarnaev's precarious condition, both physical and legal, didn't prevent him telling investigators that his older brother was seeking after all "to defend Islam from attack," as per the report. This admission puts the U.S. in general, and its government in particular, in a sticky position: Twelve years after the attack against the twin towers, the U.S. has within its borders Islamic terrorism, MADE IN THE USA.

The Tsarnaev brothers weren't born in the U.S., but they did move there by choice, and they received a mighty fine absorption basket. They immigrated to a pleasant and tolerant city (Boston), where the older brother was awarded for his boxing skills, and the younger brother was granted a scholarship to study at a prestigious academic institution.

The wonderful thing about the U.S. is that feeling the country gives you just a half hour after your plane touches down in one if its 50 states. No matter where you came from, whether you be Polish, Nigerian or Chechen, you are proud, already, in the taxi cab or bus that is shuttling you to your new home, to be American.

Still, the case of the Tsarnaev brothers shows that radical Islam can be more powerful than anything else, including the American Dream. The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday that the mother of the two terrorist brothers was highly influential on her sons' outlooks and actions, including the final one that they took on April 15. Transportation Security Administration officers can't spot a mother's influence during routine checks at the border. The U.S.'s biggest problem now is that it appears that Russia's intelligence service portentously issued a warning about the elder Tsarnaev brother two years ago, but authorities in the U.S. found no incriminating evidence during his questioning.

The government prefers to believe, as do many commentators in the U.S. (and in Israel, too), that the two brothers were just delusional, and that they weren't acting on behalf of global Islamic terrorism. This view, actually, won't do much to protect the U.S. -- or Islam, for that matter -- from the next attack that it doesn't deserve to suffer.

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