Maybe I’m being obtuse but I found Clint Watts’s post at RealClearDefense on the subject above terribly garbled. Is the source of my confusion the implication that Americans are somehow responsible for white nationalist terrorism everywhere?
Mosques are attacked abroad and desecrated in the States. American synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego have become the site of mass shootings. White nationalist terrorism has long been on the rise. Why doesn’t America do something about it?
Is it the conflating of political posturing with terrorism?
Not long after the election of President Barack Obama, all indicators pointed to a dramatic rise in domestic terrorism in the U.S. White supremacist threats mounted after America elected its first African-American president. Online conspiracy theories regarding the president’s citizenship and religion helped fuel a rise in racism intertwined with domestic politics. Alongside race-based groups, anti-government groups rose as well, powered by erroneous beliefs about abortion, repealing of the Second Amendment, or declaration of martial law.
Is it the failure to apprehend the fundamental difference between Islamist terrorism that reaches us and a single armed nutcase that kills people at worship in Southern California?
From 2001 to the summer of 2016, the threat of international jihadists far outpaced domestic extremists. Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their legions of inspired supporters knew who they wanted to attack and why. They were highly motivated to commit violence to advance their agendas. The challenge for jihadists came down to whether they could gain access to high-profile targets and whether they had the weapons, bombs, skills, and experience to pull off an attack. For domestic extremists in America, nearly all had or could acquire weapons; some even had training, but few were focused on who and where to attack—and almost none were willing to commit violence.
Today, domestic extremist violence outpaces Islamist extremism, and the character of the threat has changed dramatically in the last three years. Right-wing extremists and international jihadists from the last decade have many parallels and some differences.
Let me give it a shot. Every single Islamist terrorist group of international reach has had state sponsorship. Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was sponsored by Saudis. DAESH has had Saudi sponsorship. Do you see a pattern emerging here? The Taliban is sponsored by the Pakistanis. I could go on.
Contrast that with the murders in the Poway synagogue. I have heard no credible allegations of any state sponsorship of the evil cretinous perpetrator of those murders. I haven’t even heard allegations of a conspiracy in that attack. Just one malfactor who found likeminded people to support his venomous beliefs on the Internet.
The proper instrumentality for dealing with such isn’t the U. S. military or the FBI. It’s local law enforcement. Let’s not make a federal case of this.
The reality is that in a country of 330 million people a certain number will be vicious and with the enormous power that modern weaponry gives to individuals they will be able to do a significant amount of harm in a very short period of time. No foreseeable course of action will change either of those factors and holding out the possibility that there is such a course of action is delusional.
I would go further and say it’s not only state sponsorship, but also self-organization and the support of a distinct political community. Al Shabaab is a good example of this. They are not state-sponsored in any meaningful sense, they are home-grown, and developed their own organizational structure, political goals and receive moral and material support from a local coherent political community.
I don’t think angry white guys looking for 8Chan fame fit into that framework. And neither do a lot of Islamist attacks – Boston Marathon bombing, Pulse nightclub, etc.
Self-Radicalized individuals are the hardest ones to stop. With more organized groups we have more success because we have better methods. For one thing, we don’t have to worry about civil rights when addressing foreign threats.
As with the Easter bomber, who, according to relatives espoused no extreme views until after he traveled to Australia for his master’s degree, these bad actors are influenced somewhere along the line. I hope law enforcement follow that thread.
Our own Timothy McVeigh was influenced by Posse Comitatus which was in turn inspired and involved in the farm crisis of the early 80’s and William Pierce, using the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald’s book, ”The Turner Diaries,”.
My obvious point is, nothing comes out of nowhere, these are police matters, and no, “A White Supremacy Problem” would imply organization, leadership, position. There is no leadership to take down.
But in Islam there is.
I’m a lot more pessimistic about the Boston Marathon bombing than you. I think it was basically a conspiracy that involved almost all of the Chechens in the United States (there aren’t that many of them and most of them knew). Asylum-seekers aren’t what they used to be.
My point exactly.
The white nationalist/supremacist attacks are police matters, but it is significant one that needs sufficient police attention. It doesn’t get lots of attention considering how many people they kill.
Steve
Seems Watt wants us to move to a legal system that locks up wrong thinkers because they might do bad things. Would prefer we punish acts (bombings, mass vandalism, etc) not membership in the Turner Diary Literary Society. Which means unless Lamont Cranston is on patrol, we will always be playing catch up just as we do with serial killers, etc.
I have no doubt that municipalities that keep their costs low by maintaining police forces incapable of handling the situation locally are eager to fob the problem off to the FBI.
Over the period of the last 18 years 87 people have been killed in the United States by white nationalist terrorists. That’s in a country of 330 million people. Yes, it’s a problem. Chicago has had about twice that many black young men killed by other black young men this year.
“Chicago has had about twice that many black young men killed by other black young men this year.â€
Not to mention repeat offender drunk drivers, or illegal immigrants or mentally ill people or even:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
Scarce resources might be better spent chasing things other than the existential threat of white nationalists.
WRT medical errors I can only offer my opinion. The present predisposition towards more care inevitably results in more errors. The incentives must change.
More, and more heroic, care. It simply has to be statistically true. But volume can’t be the total story. And in a world of limited resources chasing white nationalists seems pure folly………………you might even think it was really just a political point being made.