Shahzad’s hatred stemmed from personal failure, war on terror

NEW YORK - Confessed Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad’s hatred stemmed from personal failure and the US-led Allied war on terror in Afghanistan.

According to the New York Daily News, a raft of grievances that built up over time fueled his descent from a suburban Connecticut family man to a wanna-be terrorist.

It quoted law enforcement sources, as saying that “He did a slow burn.”

“[He was] slowly radicalized as events piled up - the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, Muslim brothers being killed, innocent people being hit by drones from above,” one source said.

Shahzad, the son of a wealthy Pakistani family who earned a college degree and an M.B.A. in America, offered few clues of his growing resentment toward his adopted country.

But last year, Shahzad’s fixation on U.S. policy in the Middle East was evident at a house party in leafy Shelton, Conn.

Neighbor Dennis Flanner said a brooding Shahzad was staring at the TV news in a room packed with drunken partygoers.

“They were talking about those drones blowing things up in Afghanistan,” Flanner, 18, said. “He was the only one watching it. Everybody else was just having a good time.”

At one point, Flanner said, a reveler told Shahzad to loosen up and have some fun. Shahzad wasn’t having it.

“They shouldn’t be shooting people from the sky,” Shahzad replied, according to Flanner. “You know, they should come down and fight.”

By that point, Shahzad, a financial analyst, was starting to shed his middle-class life.

In June, he quit the job he had held since 2006 at marketing firm Affinion. Banks foreclosed on the home he had owned since 2004 and where he had lived with his wife, Huma Mian, and their young son and daughter.

In the fall, Shahzad went to Pakistan, where he admits getting bomb training, according to a federal complaint. When he returned to the U.S. in February, he rented an apartment in a shabby area of Bridgeport, Conn.

“It looks like everything was tilting toward, ‘I’m not succeeding in America. I’m going back to Pakistan, and I’m going to carry out an attack,’” said former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt.

Van Zandt said it was revealing that Shahzad opted not to carry out a suicide attack.

“It tells me that his dedication to whatever motivation he had to do this was not to the level of what we’ve seen of other Middle Eastern terrorists. He was not that radicalized.” (ANI)