Sniper kills Pennsylvania state cop, yet nobody calls him a terrorist

The press and the Pennsylvania cops have crafted all kinds of labels for Eric Matthew Frein. He’s a “cop-hating gunman,” a “trooper slay suspect,” a “cop ambush suspect,” an “accused cop shooter,” a “suspected cop killer,” a “highly skilled marksman,” a “self-declared survivalist.”

And yet – quite inexplicably – nobody has called him a suspected terrorist. Which, at this writing, is the most accurate description of all.

But why hasn’t anyone labeled him that way? Duh. Take a guess.

First, the grim details: Last Friday night, state trooper Bryon Dickson left the barracks in Blooming Grove, Pike County, to head home to his wife and two young sons, when he was shot by a hidden sniper. Within 90 seconds, trooper Alex Douglass was shot when he tried to help Dickson. Douglass was critically wounded, but Dickson died.

On Monday, cops found an abandoned jeep ; two spent .308 shell casings matched casings retrieved from the sniper scene. They also found a driver’s license bearing the name Eric Frein. On Tuesday, with a warrant, they searched the house where Frein lived with his parents. In Frein’s bedroom, they found a sniper manual (sample passage: “What the sniper is trying to sever or pulverize is the target’s brainstem”), and they determined that two of dad’s weapons were missing: an AK-47 and a .308 rifle.

Dad said he didn’t know the whereabouts of his 31-year-old boy. But Dad said he had trained the boy to shoot, and, in fact, the boy was a better shooter than Dad. In Dad’s words, “Doesn’t miss.”

Aw. He must be so proud.

The cops looked into Eric’s life and discovered, as state police commissioner Frank Noonan said Tuesday, that “he has made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and also to commit mass acts of murder…He has expressed anti-government leanings…and seems to be very angry with a lot of things that go on in our society.”

Frein has eluded the massive manhunt; apparently he studied his sniper manual, which has all kinds of tips about camouflage and concealment and leaving footprints that point the wrong way. In his wooded region of northeast Pennsylvania, schools have been closed, and residents have been urged to secure their homes, to “be alert and vigilant.” A Monroe County commissioner says that Frein is simply “some sort of militant wacko survival person.”

OK, let’s review. We have a well-trained sniper who hates authority, hates society, hates government, and hates cops enough to plug them from ambush. He’s so lethal, so locked and loaded, that communities in the Pocono Mountains feel terrorized. So why isn’t this guy being called a terrorist? Does he not fit the word?

Apocalyptic politicians like Lindsey Graham are so busy freaking out about ISIS – last Sunday, on Fox News, he said we gotta stop ISIS now “before we all get killed here at home” – and so fearful of swarthy killers with funny names invading via Mexico, that they can’t recognize the ongoing terrorist threat here at home.

Frein was nurtured in the standard all-American gun-loving household (hey, don’t we all need an Ak-47 at home?), and stewed in the standard all-American authority-hating juices. He kept camouflage face paint in his bedroom. He toted the AK-47 on social media. He collected, according to the criminal complaint, “various information concerning foreign embassies.”

But come on. We all know why he hasn’t been tagged with the T-word:

He’s a white guy with a red-blooded American name.

Just like Jerad and Amanda Miller, the cop-hating couple that walked into a Las Vegas pizza shop three months ago, toting Nazi regalia, and summarily executed two cops. (According to Vegas authorities, the Millers had “an ideology along the lines of militia and white supremacists.”) Just like Frazier Glenn Cross, self-described “white patriot,” who ambushed and killed three random people at two Jewish facilities in Kansas five months ago. Just like Wade Michael Page, the white supremacist who killed six Sikhs at a Wisconsin house of worship two years ago. Just like Jerry Ralph Kane, devotee of the right-wing “sovereign citizen” movement, who killed two Arkansas cops four years ago.

In fact, the nonpartisan New America Foundation has calculated that home-grown right-wing extremists have killed 37 Americans on home soil since 9/11; people motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology have killed 21. (Frein might not qualify as “right-wing,” but he sure qualifies as home-grown.) 

So let’s take off the blinders already, invoke the T-word, and face the fact that the enemy can just as easily be red, white, and blue. The Department of Homeland Security warned in a report several years ago that “non-Islamic domestic terrorism” is a clear and present danger – and if that sounds fanciful, think about trooper Bryon Dickson. His funeral was today.

 

 

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And there’s no better way to describe Wade Michael Page, the Wisconsin white supremacist who killed six Sikhs in 2012. And Jerry Ralph Kane, a devotee of the right-wing “sovereign citizen” movement, who killed two Arkansas cops in 2010. And Scott Roeder, another “sovereign citizen,” who killed a Kansas abortion doctor in 2009. And Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush, a trio that killed two Latinos in Arizona and stole their money, also in 2009, in the hopes of financing an anti-immigrant vigilante group. And Frazier Glenn Cross, a Klansman and self-described “white patriot” who killed three people at two Jewish facilities in Kansas just two months ago. – See more at: http://www.gazettextra.com/20140610/dick_polman_why_no_mention_of_domestic_right_wing_terrorism#sthash.xCuFRP1S.dpuf
And there’s no better way to describe Wade Michael Page, the Wisconsin white supremacist who killed six Sikhs in 2012. And Jerry Ralph Kane, a devotee of the right-wing “sovereign citizen” movement, who killed two Arkansas cops in 2010. And Scott Roeder, another “sovereign citizen,” who killed a Kansas abortion doctor in 2009. And Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush, a trio that killed two Latinos in Arizona and stole their money, also in 2009, in the hopes of financing an anti-immigrant vigilante group. And Frazier Glenn Cross, a Klansman and self-described “white patriot” who killed three people at two Jewish facilities in Kansas just two months ago. – See more at: http://www.gazettextra.com/20140610/dick_polman_why_no_mention_of_domestic_right_wing_terrorism#sthash.xCuFRP1S.dpuf