Multiculturalism Didn't Stop Atta

In his newest column, Mark Steyn knows what to blame for 9/11 and the tragedies that followed: multiculturalism.

WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier. Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."

Of course, she should have called the FBI, not the PC Police. But she didn't. Steyn thinks the new, home-grown, fish-and-chips-eating terrorists that bombed London will change that, and provides evidence:

At The Age, Terry Lane, last heard blaming John Howard for the "end of democracy as we know it" and calling for "the army of my country ... to be defeated" in Iraq, now says multiculturalism is a "repulsive word" whereas "assimilation is a beaut" and should be commended.

I'm not so sure. Multiculturalism and political correctness have become a powerful weapon of our enemies -- the Islomafascists for sure, but also the Socialists, the UN one-worlders, the separation of church and state crowd, the anti-war aging hippies and others. The latter will hold on, being dupes to the jihadists, and threatening us.

As President Bush said, "If you're not with us, you're with them."