Well, no sooner do I bring up concerns over Muslim assimilation in Europe than, as if on cue, the German authorities say they have discovered a more serious home-grown threat: two German converts to Islam (along with one Turkish resident of Germany) have been arrested for allegedly
“planning major terrorist attacks against several sites frequented by Americans, including the busy United States air base at Ramstein and the Frankfurt international airport.”

As of now the details are sketchy, but that won’t stop the Internet opinionizing. Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters has some cautious speculation:

This follows the Danish action to quash a terror plot in Copenhagen yesterday. These events are probably unconnected in the pragmatic sense, but symbolically may be another story. With the anniversary of 9/11 coming next week, terrorist cells would aim for a spectacular attack even without central coordination. It’s also possible that they are connected to al-Qaeda in a more direct fashion, and since these men got captured alive in both instances, we may get good intel on whatever connections they have.

John Cole at Balloon Juice feels the appropriate response is sarcasm. “Time to invade, since there apparently is a terrorism problem in Germany,” he writes. “Let’s bring freedom and democracy to Germany as we fight them over there instead of over here and do for Germany what we did for Iraq!”

While Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal finds a comparison instructive: “It sounds like this may have been a real one - unlike the phony ones the U.S. has been able to ‘break up.’ And they managed to do it with out ignoring 800 years of legal tradition and turning their country into a police state.”

So does Andrew Sullivan, although with a bit more gravitas:

Congrats to the Germans. Some obvious points: these men are educated, two of three are German nationals, all seem to have been trained not in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a putative ally. It is hard to see how the Iraq war - whether a failure or a success - would have any impact on this tiny cell’s attempt at mass murder in the name of God. This is simply the religious violence we have to contend with for the indefinite future. All we can do is what the Germans did: keep up surveillance (with protections against abuse), and run as many to ground as we can.