Bad Choices

I left the house at 7:15 AM this morning the same as any other—two travel mugs of coffee (one for the drive, one for the desk) in the console cupholders, a bagged lunch on the front seat, and my first-grader in the back seat, strapped into her booster. At the bottom of the hill in front of our community were the eight or nine kids from our neighborhood who rode the bus, waiting at their stop along with one of the mothers. As I waited for a break if traffic so I could go drop my daughter off at her school, I thought back to this disturbing post I read about last night at Michelle Malkin’s site.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer sums up the story in brief:

Two Saudi men who boarded a school bus full of children and gave conflicting reasons why there were there were arrested and held without bail, authorities said Sunday.

Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were charged with misdemeanor trespassing and were jailed after a judge said Saturday she wanted more background information on them. A hearing was scheduled Tuesday.

The two men arrived in the country six months ago on student visas and are enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida.

Investigators said they boarded the school bus Friday, sat down and began speaking in Arabic. Their behavior concerned the driver, a substitute, who alerted the school district.

The men were asked why they boarded the bus, and sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said they gave different answers: They wanted to enroll in an easier English language program than the one at USF; they wanted to see a high school; and they thought it would be fun.

Ahmed Bedier, director of the Central Florida Council on American-Islamic Relations, criticized the decision to arrest and detain the men.

"The only reason (this happened) is because of who they are, and that's wrong," he said. "Thus far, it doesn't seem like they've been afforded their full rights for something as simple as getting on the wrong bus."

Mr. Bedier, Beslan only happened because of "who people were."

Some of the children were lucky, and they were saved by Russian soldiers and police.

Some weren’t so lucky.

My daughter was just three at the time of the Beslan attack, and it disturbed me greatly to see children her age and younger carried out on bloody stretchers with lifeless eyes.

The thought that Almanajam and Alsidran were on a “test run” for a Beslan-type scenario immediately came to mind. Few things could horrify the American public more than a school bus (or school buses) full of small children held hostage or murdered by terrorists. 9/11 horrified America because of the magnitude of the attacks. An attack on school buses would be horrific because of how personal it is. Few Americans have ver worked in a high rise building, but all of us have probably ridden a bus, as have our children. It hits much closer to home.

And so I think about Mr. Almanajam and Mr. Alsidran, and I wonder what the "morally acceptable" response would be if I saw young Arabic men loitering near a bus stop wearing trench costs in the summer.

Should I call the police?

I usually leave my neighborhood just minutes before the bus arrives; the police likely wouldn’t arrive in time. Even if the police did respond in a timely manner, there is absolutely no way they could come over the hill, drive the 400 yards to the bus stop, stop, and exit their vehicles before a real suicide bomber could just saunter across the intersection and detonate himself at the bus stop with a smile on his face. The police would merely be witnesses at best, and victims at worst.

Ultimately, we can’t rely on the police to protect us from this threat. Thee are simple too many schools, to many schools, and too many bus stops. We either stop the terrorists at the border—something that President scrupulously avoids at all costs—or we are forced into a situation where there is not last legal line of defense, just concerned moms and dads, without training, acting with fear against their worst nightmare as best they can.

Mr. Bedier, CAIR and the ACLU can be as disappointed as you like, but if I see young militant-aged Arabs such as Mr. Almanajam and Mr. Alsidran wearing trench coats or carrying backpacks on a muggy Carolina morning near a school bus stop, my actions are likely to be swift, brutal, and permanent.

I very well might be wrong acting with such rushed judgement, and I could face spending the rest of my life in jail for killing men that could be innocent, but if you see such a situation developing and recognize the threat, how else can you react? Two lives ended and another ruined, or 40 school kids blown up? It is a horrible choice, but one I’ve already made.