Benefit of the Doubt

Bauerle had bullsh1t artist extraordinaire I mean CIA jocksniffer I mean terrorism fetishist Douglas Hagmann on his program this morning. (Note as an aside that the Northeast Intelligence Network’s Wikipedia entry has been scrubbed).

They discussed whether or not the mall shooting in Salt Lake City was terrorism. Bauerle then modified that to “islamofascist” (whatever that means) terrorism.

I think intelligent people would agree that any mass shooting at a shopping mall is “terrorism”. That’s the end of the discussion. We should be concerned with all sorts of terrorism, in all shapes and sizes. Not just “islamofascist” terrorism.

You see, the kid who did the shooting was a Bosnian Muslim refugee, Sulejman Talović.

Hagmann first off reassures us that the family probably wasn’t here illegally. Whew.

But he adds that they were present during a Christian vs. Muslim war in the former Yugoslavia. So, I guess draw your own conclusion, right? Hagmann indicates that, since the kid was Muslim and was well-armed, and because Hagmann in his infinite knowitalldom about terrorism and terrorists knows that shopping malls are going to be targeted by Muslim terrorists. EVERYBODY PANIC!

The kid was well-armed in a country where anyone with a little bit of initiative could probably get a hold of a rocket launcher. Especially out west. Probably legally.

The kid was 18 years old and fled a horrific genocide with his family.

You see, Douglas Hagmann is a “terrorism expert” who isn’t fluent in Arabic, and probably not Serbo-Croatian, either.

According to the Nezavisne Novine, an independent Serbian newspaper based in the Republika Srpska capital of Banja Luka,

The citizens of the small town near Tuzla [Bosnian Federation] where Sulejman Talović and his family – his mother Sabira, father Suljo, and sister – lived as refugees after evacuating their native Cerska near Vlasenica, are shocked by the news of his crimes in Salt Lake City.

They learned from family throughout America of the killings that the 18 year-old Sulejman committed. None of them know the details, but they cannot imagine what caused Sulejman to shoot at innocent civilians.

“I know the entire Talović family, and they’re all such good and fine people, and I can’t believe that it’s true that Suljo’s son shot those people. Here, they were wonderful friends, but there, who knows what happened? The kid probably started taking drugs, because all of our people who go to America lose control of their kids, said Omer Johić from Cerska near Vlasenica, who was a friend of the Talovićes before the war.

Zijad ÄŒerkić, their first friend there, says that the Talović family moved to a town near Tuzla in 1994, and occupied a house that a Serb family had abandoned. Poverty followed them until their arrival in America eight years ago. Suljo performed odd jobs for little money, working in the fields or chopping wood. His wife helped out, and she’d bring Sulejman and his sister along, because they didn’t have anyone to watch them.

The friends remember that Sulejman would pick corn in the fields because he was bored. The boy wanted a normal childhood, playing with friends, games. Aside from that, he was hungry more often than he was full.

People who know the Talovićes imagine that this poverty in his childhood, a year of hiding in the woods before they reached Tuzla, left marks on the little boy.

“They dreamed of America. Sabira went with the kids in 1998, because she had a brother and other relatives there, and they helped her. After a year, Suljo followed. They hoped that they’d have a better life there. They’d had it with everything here, they didn’t even have the clothes they needed”, remembers Zijad ÄŒerkić.

Refugees from Cerska who still live in that town near Tuzla, wonder what sort of fate will strike Sulja, Sabira, and their daughter, after this shocking killing. They fear that the American government will send them back to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They say the 18 year old Sulejman ruined the American dream that they had held since their exile from Cerska.

Safet Bajrić from Cerska, whose sister also lives in America, says that he’s sad for the Talovic’s unhappy fate. He recounts that, after their departure from Bosnia, they had helped many others to reach the promised land. They sent papers to their relatives and thanks to them, most of the Talović family is far from their hometown.

It couldn’t possibly be a troubled refugee teenage kid who saw his entire life blow up in his face at a young, impressionable age, fled genocide, lived in the woods for a year before finding safety as a refugee, and then – living in poverty – moved to a completely different environment (Salt Lake City ain’t the Cerska enclave) where his family went to in order to find a better life, and peace, may have had a hard time of it putting the horror of war behind them and incorporating their traditions with their new life in the Wasatch, now could it? Could it be depression? Psychosis? Something that mental health treatment might have prevented if only…?