Waging the incompetent jihad in London

The British have had some luck in recent attempts to launch terrorist attacks by radical jihadists. Last year in Glasgow, the best the terrorists could do was to set fire to his own car in an attack at the airport. If that was the B team, then today’s attack on a London restaurant shows that jihadists in Britain have reached the bottom of the barrel:

Police arrested a “radicalised” convert to Islam after he was injured in a bomb explosion in a city centre on Thursday.

The centre of Exeter was evacuated after the lunchtime blast at a restaurant popular with families in a shopping centre and bomb disposal experts and sniffer dogs were sent in.

Police later named the 22-year-old, who suffered cuts to his eye and facial burns in the explosion and remains in police custody at a hospital, as Nicky Reilly, a man with a history of mental illness. …

Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville said initial police inquiries suggested Reilly “had adopted the Islamic faith.”

“We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable state, he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of,” he said.

The bombs were designed for maximum damage. Like most jihadist devices, the two Reilly bombs included nails to send deadly shrapnel in all directions. Only one bomb detonated, and only partially, apparently while Reilly tried to plant it.

I don’t mean to make light of this, but have the jihadists in the UK run out of volunteers? Authorities make Reilly sound like someone with minimal connection to reality. Did his handlers really expect him to have the competence to carry out this attack? If so, they must be either as nimble as Reilly or simply out of options. The only casualty in the blast was Reilly himself, and he’s apparently alive and able to talk — and probably not all that adept at keeping his mouth shut, either.

The attack serves as a reminder that London remains a high-priority target of the radical Islamists. However, their resources appear to get thinner and thinner, which shows that radical and violent jihad may have lost its luster as much in Europe as it has in Iraq.

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