Is there anyone who wasn’t presuming in the immediate aftermath of the Nice tragedy that the late killer wasn’t some kind of Islamic nutter? Was anyone wondering if he/she was Swedish? The fact that the truck-driving fiend has been revealed to have been Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old, divorced, Tunisian-born father of three…well, no surprise.
But he may not have been any kind of radical, jihad-minded, ISIS-following terrorist. Not as we tend to imagine this kind of pathology, at least. More like a raging loser, a rogue who exploded, closer to the Orlando killer than those behind the Paris, Brussels or San Bernardino slayings.
A N.Y. Times story reports that Bouhlel, a delivery guy, “had a history of petty crime, including theft, going back to 2010, and he received a six-month suspended sentence in March for assaulting a driver during an altercation in January.” To my knowledge no terrorist organization or website has allied itself with Bouhlel or cheered his despicable act.
Admit it — if the killer had been revealed as a native of Sweden or the Sudan or Iceland or South Korea, 99% of us would have been surprised.