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John’s elaboration on the terrorist incident is interesting, especially the part about the suspect’s extraordinary wealth and family prestige in Nigeria.

Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online echoes John’s point and adds that this fact further dispels a leftist notion that the average terrorist becomes one due to either poverty or U.S. support for Israel. Rather, fundamentalist Islam “encourages in an Hasan or Mutallab age-old passions like pride, envy, and a sense of inferiority — all accelerated by instantaneous communications and abetted by continual Western apologetics that on a global level blame Westerners for self-induced misery in many Islamic countries.”

Hanson also adds that we will now see fewer criticisms of Bush’s approach to counterterrorism as the nation is reminded of how real the threat remains. Obama has publicly denounced Bush’s “destroying” the constitution while retaining virtually every counterterrorism tactic in Bush’s arsenal.

For those who still want to blame the West for this attack along with every other act of Islamist terrorism, you can blame British colonial administrator F.D. Lugard, who ruled Northern Nigeria from 1914-1919. Lugard ruled indirectly through local Muslim rulers, forming a power structure that resulted in Sharia law’s current existence in Northern Nigeria today. But Lugard only created one breeding ground for radical Islam; had not a Nigerian terrorist carried out this plot, someone else could have.