parakkum

I find it peculiar that every news report I've heard about the arrest of two men in Lodi on suspicion of their being part of Al Qaeda repeats the phrase, "Trained on how to kill Americans" or some variant of same.

For example, there's this CNN story.

Does killing Americans require qualitatively different acts than killing anyone else? It's such a strange personalization of it. After all, yes, Al Qaeda does train people to kill, and their long-term intent includes applying that to Americans (and Saudis, Spaniards and anyone else they want to cow) -- but we hardly say that our soldiers are training to kill Arabs, North Koreans, Chinese, Soviets in days gone by, or anything else.

But maybe I am special, and some poor Al Qaeda schmuck has to learn special ways to defeat me that don't apply to, say, Canadians.