what’s wrong with this picture?

These two headlines were next to each other at Memeorandum yesterday:

John Bolton to be target of citizen’s arrest at Hay Festival — John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, faces a citizen’s arrest when he addresses an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales this evening. — George Monbiot, the journalist and activist …

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Discussion: MoJoBlog and A Blog For All

Discussion:

Jonathan Stein / MoJoBlog: John Bolton to Be Target of Citizens Arrest in Wales

Lawhawk / A Blog For All: Journalist Seeks To Arrest John Bolton in UK

New York Times:

Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally Women — BRUSSELS — On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes. — In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair.

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Discussion: Jihad Watch, JammieWearingFool, The Poor Man Institute and Danger Room

Discussion:

Robert / Jihad Watch: Muslim woman wages Internet jihad in Belgium

JammieWearingFool: ‘She is Very Radical, Very Sly and Very Dangerous’

The Poor Man Institute: I am beginning to suspect that the War on Terror is composed entirely of horses**t

Noah Shachtman / Danger Room: She Wages Online Jihad

I’ve been saying for a while now that the world is upside down. These headlines underscore that reality:

The former U.S. ambassador to the UN—whose role is to represent the United States in front of the world—is targeted by “progressives” [in this case, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper] as a criminal because he was ” ‘instrumental in preparing and initiating the Iraq war by disseminating false claims through the State Department” while he was under-secretary of state for arms control.’ ”

Meanwhile, an acknowledged jihadist, whose role is “to inspire other people to wage jihad,”gets the front page treatment in the New York Times, which quotes the director of Belgium’s federal police force thus: “She enjoys the protection that [lenient Belgian law] offers. At the same time, she is a potential threat.”

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that “war-mongering” is being treated as a crime on one side—namely, ours—but not on the other. Not very fair, that. Nor very confidence-inspiring for your normal everyday citizen of the West, who wants the authorities to prevent crimes—to act before a terrorist incident occurs, not to react afterward.

After all, anyone can react after a crime is committed—in any number of ways, including the extralegal. If the authorities allow too many such crimes to occur (through lenient laws, or lenient enforcement of laws), eventually the people being hurt by such crimes will start to take the law into their own hands.