The culprit is identified as Omar Seddique Mateen (29) of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Mateen was killed by police in the early morning hours after a shoot-out.
The first main question that I have, of course, is whether or not this was a terror attack?
Was this an example of the Jihad come to America?
While the FBI is looking into the matter it is already clear how Democrats and progressives will react in distinction from Republicans and conservatives.
The Democrats and progressives will point the finger of blame in various directions, but none of them will be toward Mateen, nor toward the Jihad. Instead the Democrats and progressives will look toward sociology and psychology and will condemn the NRA while implicating Trump. You will recall that it was said that the Fort Hood Jihadi had contracted Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder vicariously through his patients and Obama did his best to obscure the Jihadi nature of the attack by terming it "work-place violence." The various other Jihadi attacks are generally described as committed by unaffiliated crazy people. In Europe they tend to talk about the failure of native Europeans to properly care for their Muslim populations leading to the often violent alienation of Muslim youth.
Obama will likely soon make a statement to the country vowing to maintain vigilance against "violent extremism" and will admonish the people of the United States not to equate this massacre with Islam in any way.
There will also, of course, be a renewed push for gun control. In fact, if you look over the comments in Daily Kos' treatment of this story you will see that they are talking about practically nothing but gun control.
ArchTeryxMuch of the American political right-wing, on the other hand, has already decided that this was a Jihadi attack and I suspect that they're probably correct, but we do not know, yet.
This was an act of war within our own borders, and it has nothing at all to do with terrorism, Islam, or any of what the howler monkeys of the right are currently screeching about. This was an act of war against us all by the gun humpers, and it’s high damn time we mobilized to take the fight right back to them.
If the motive for the attack was grounded in a Koran-Sharia based contempt for Gay people then, obviously, it was a prominent case of Jihad in America. The killer need not be directly connected to Islamist organizations, nor do any of those organizations need to take credit.
All that needs to be determined is if this was, or was not, a theologically-motivated shooting.
Of course, were Omar Mateen's name David Smith, and were he an Evangelical Christian, the Left would already have concluded that it was a religious attack and would spit huge amounts of toxins toward that community.
My bet is that this was, in fact, a Jihadi attack, but I am willing to withhold judgment until we learn more.
Update:
Various news outlets are reporting that Mateen did, in fact, call 911 and pledge allegiance to ISIS sometime before the massacre.
If this is, indeed, the case then their can be no question that this was a Jihadi attack.
Welcome to the Age of Jihad in America.
