Glenn Reynolds: An untraditional war
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 8:54 a.m. EDT June 13, 2016
We can't stop ISIL-inspired massacres if we deny we're fighting Islam's jihadist strain.
In the wake of the Orlando shootings, people are trotting out the usual post-massacre talking points about gun control, terrorism, etc. But the solutions aren’t so easy.
Gun control is much stricter in Europe, but that hasn’t stopped mass shootings like the ones at Charlie Hebdo’s offices or at the Bataclan concert hall. (It’s also very strict in California, but that didn’t stop the shootings at San Bernardino.) Talking about gun control is mostly a way of avoiding a tough problem.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, was quick to tweet out that this vindicates his positions: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!” But Trump’s proposal of a temporary moratorium on immigration of Muslims to America wouldn’t have prevented shooter Omar Mateen’s actions. Mateen wasn’t a recent immigrant but a U.S. citizen born of Afghan parents, and he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, according to a Department of Homeland Security report cited by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The thing is, proposals such as gun control are basically peacetime remedies, which don’t apply in time of war. But traditional wartime remedies might not work, either, because this is not a traditional war.
Instead, what we are facing is what William S. Lind calls “fourth-generation warfare.” Or maybe it’s even fifth-generation warfare: We’re not fighting armies. We’re not fighting guerrillas. We’re not even fighting traditional terrorists. Instead, we’re fighting an opponent who turns apparently law-abiding citizens (Mateen was licensed as a security guard and thus had passed background checks) into killers without anyone noticing. They’re not actually “lone wolf” terrorists; they’re more like human drones, attacking distant targets on command without warning.
Well, that last isn’t quite true. There were warning signs with the San Bernardino shooters, whose neighbors reportedly didn’t want to call the cops for fear of being thought racist. And there were warning signs with Mateen, who apparently had been on security officials’ radar screen for some time but not enough to do anything about it. Classmates of Nidal Hassan said he regularly spouted Islamist propaganda months before he shot up Fort Hood, but the military was too politically correct to do anything and afterward tried for some time to pretend that his deliberate, jihadist attack was merely “workplace violence.”
To prevent this sort of event in the future, we need to do several things.
First, interrupt the flow of radicalizing propaganda at the source: ISIL and various other jihadist outfits need to be neutralized or destroyed. These organizations pursue a deliberate strategy of radicalizing Muslims in Western countries to turn them into terrorists, and they operate networks of sympathizers throughout the USA. We used to cozy up to the Saudis, but thanks to hydraulic fracturing we don’t really need their oil anymore, so they need to be told to put a stop to this sort of support or else. We likely could have nipped ISIL in the bud a few years ago at minimal cost — or kept it from sprouting in the first place by maintaining a presence in Iraq — but it needs to be brought down now.
Vigils were held around the country grieving for the more than 50 people who were killed in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Meanwhile, the wife of the shooter is calling him "mentally ill." (June 12) AP
We also need to be clear about what it is we’re fighting. We’re not fighting Islam as such. Many good Muslims are horrified by this violence. But we are fighting the jihadist strain of Islam, and unfortunately quite a few Muslims view that strain as legitimate.
We can’t allow ourselves to be blinded to this reality, unless we want to see jihadist attacks like this — which have, sadly, become normal in the past few years — continue and increase.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
