The roundup last weekend of a Christian militia accused of plotting terror attacks recalls an important truth: Violent kooks come in all sizes, shapes and social persuasions.
Americans need to have just as many tools at their disposal to deal with them.
Certainly, the carnage allegedly fantasized by the Michigan-based Hutaree militia — which styles itself part of a “Colonial Christian Republic” — was inspired by a worldview substantially removed from the radical Islam that remains the country’s No. 1 threat.
But as homegrown loons go, the Hutaree seem potentially at least as dangerous as the crackpots who plotted against Fort Dix several years ago, or those who schemed against two Bronx synagogues last year.
In indictments handed down against nine militia members Monday, federal officials charge that the Hutaree was plotting to murder law-enforcement officers and set off bombs at their funerals — in the expectation that such violence would trigger a domestic revolution.
At the very least, they could have killed a good many people — so kudos to the feds who broke up the plot.
If only that were the end of it.
Alas, the Hutaree case is likely to boost the bogus narrative that such antigovernment militias represent fundamentally the same threat as Islamist terrorists.
Thus, in essence, the argument for giving civilian trials to 9/11 conspirators at Gitmo: If the normal criminal-justice system is good enough to take down the Hutaree folks, why not Khalid Sheik Muhammad, too?
This is nonsense. To be sure, civilian justice works just fine against some Islamist terror — specifically, those plots (see above, Fort Dix and the synagogues) hatched by US citizens on US soil.
But one need only contrast the wild fantasies indulged by the Hutaree kooks with the lethal calculation of killers like the 9/11 plotters or the Fort Hood gunman (not to mention their respective body counts) to understand the radical difference between the two threats.
One consists of the dedicated agents of a ruthless, religion-driven ideology.
The other: a few guys in the woods with guns.
The Obama administration — Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in particular — needs to keep its eyes on the ball.