The Audacity of Jihadi Tenacity

Daniel Pipes calls Time Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad's bald admission in court that he's a soldier in Allah's army "jaw-dropping". It's rare, writes Pipes, for jihadis to plead guilty from the get-go. As a rule, they "save their skin by pleading not guilty or plea bargaining." Not Faisal, though. He was completely up front about his mission and its rationale:

The judge asked Shahzad after he announced an intent to plead guilty to all ten counts of his indictment, "Why do you want to plead guilty?" a reasonable question given the near certainty that guilty pleas will keep him in for long years in jail. He replied:

I want to plead guilty and I'm going to plead guilty a hundred times forward because – until the hour the U.S. pulls it forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops killing the Muslims and stops reporting the Muslims to its government – we will be attacking [the] U.S., and I plead guilty to that. 

Shahzad insisted on portraying himself as replying to American actions: "I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing [of] the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attacks," adding that "We Muslims are one community." Nor was that all; he flatly asserted that his goal had been to damage buildings and "injure people or kill people" because "one has to understand where I'm coming from, because … I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier."

Clearly, Shahzad knows who he is and what motivates his actions. Barack Hussain Obama, on the other hand...not so much. As Pipes writes, underscoring Obamaian fecklessness, the president has essayed the jaw-dropping trick of editing the jihad out of the jihad,

preferring such lame formulations as "overseas contingency operations" and "man-caused disasters."

Lame--and dangerous. A lot like that see-no-jihad COIN strategy, in fact.