Extremists collide in Garland, Texas

Needless provocation nearly brings disaster

A terrorist slaughter was narrowly averted in Texas on Sunday by a combination of sound planning and blind luck. But the circumstances point to a deeper and sure-to-recur problem — a collision of extremes that can’t be completely controlled in a free society.

On one side in the harrowing incident was the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an antiMuslim group based in New York with a history of provocation. It invited trouble in the most transparent way possible — by staging a high-profile event to draw cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. The group knew, of course, that such cartoons — gravely offensive to most Muslims — have repeatedly caused mayhem in Europe, most notably in the slaughter of 12 people, including cartoonists and journalists, at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie

Hebdo in January. But AFDI went ahead anyway.

Then, to rub salt in the wound, the group chose as keynote speaker a Dutch politician who has sought to ban the Quran in his country.

Like the French cartoonists, AFDI has a First Amendment right to express itself as it wishes. In fact, the First Amendment exists specifically to protect unpop- ular speech. Even so, that doesn’t make all speech smart or responsible, and staging an event you know is likely to produce a violent reaction is a stunt worthy of an impulsive teenager. It got the predictable result. Elton Simpson, 30, and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, 34, traveled hundreds of miles from Phoenix to attack. Simpson, a Muslim convert, was once charged by the FBI with lying to agents in connection with terrorism. The terrorism charge didn’t stick, but he was convicted and sentenced to probation for lying.

He obviously was known to be dangerous, but just as the Constitution protects free speech, it also protects people from arbitrary detention or confiscation of their weapons. So Simpson was free to drive to Garland, outside Dallas, armed to the teeth and with malicious intent.

Fortunately, an alert traffic police officer working the perimeter of the heavily protected event was ready. He shot the two gunmen dead before they could get to their target, saving countless lives. Maybe he should be cloned. The forces that brought the gunmen and the contest planners together cannot be so easily subdued. But gratuitous provocation and, worse, the potential for murderous response demand constant vigilance.

At a moment in history when terrorism is close to inevitable, the lesson from Texas is that only fools invite it while wiser men prepare.