A disturbing trend has recently emerged in America to challenge established assumptions about terrorists and terrorism in the post-9/11 world. The specter of cornfed, homegrown American terrorists engaging in acts of political violence and mayhem both within American borders and abroad is difficult to comprehend, anticipate, and defend against. The problem is also exploding in scale to judge by recent history. If the threat of the future comes from the American-born neighbor in the townhouse next door, not just the Al-Qaeda warrior hiding in Afghan caves, there are far-reaching policy implications as well.
Many in the media and in political life have chosen to ignore aspects of this phenomenon entirely because it does not compute with their narrow worldviews on race, religion, and the nature of fundamentalism. This syndrome is personified nicely by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) whose state of Michigan has become the frontline for thwarted terror events not once, but twice in the last three months. Last December crotch bomber Abdulmutallab was arrested by the FBI in Detroit after a failed attempt to bring down an airliner, and in March we saw the FBI/law enforcement roundup of the radical Christian Hutaree militia preparing to execute numerous Michigan policemen and their families in April. While Hoekstra launched a massive fundraising and media campaign over the Obama administration's handling of Abdulmutallab and how the man should have been treated as an enemy combatant, had his Miranda rights stripped, gotten waterboarded, etc. we did not hear him denouncing the Hutaree on national TV, or getting involved in the discussion in any way. Hoekstra's major platform in his gubernatorial run is increased toughness against terrorists, but apparently this is much easier applied to a funny-named black Muslim than Christian caucasians named Jones in his own backyard. But Hoekstra is just a nutshell for the sentiments shared by a wider swath of the population who make these distinctions.
A survey of the homegrown terrorist incidents from recent months demonstrates the complexity of the problem, any aspect of which we ignore at our own peril.
Americans exporting terror. The conversation about terrorism gets turned on its head when US terrorists plan to kill people in other countries instead of the other way around. But that's exactly what has been happening in a curious tradition that appears to have begun with Mr. John Walker Lindh, the most famous of the "American Taliban" who was captured by the US military in Afghanistan in 2001, a longtime and trained follower of Bin Laden who landed on the wrong side of the Jihad after being born and raised in the States. He refused to identify himself as an American citizen long after his detention. More recently the "Washington Five" were arrested while lurking in Pakistan, a group of five American youths from Northern Virginia accused of attempting to join Al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban and casing facilities for terrorist acts. It is surreal watching five American boys facing charges by counterterrorism prosecutors - of Pakistan. Meanwhile, David Headley of Chicago was arrested in March on evidence of helping plan the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, India which killed nearly 200 and wounded almost 300, including both Indian and Western innocents. While most of those attracted to these Islamist causes tend to be the sons of Muslim immigrants, others such as Lindh are born to Christian parents who made sure their kids were baptized. The lesson here is that American youngsters are susceptible to this ideology, and could form the backbone of the new terrorist frontline. President George W. Bush famously said things such as "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." Unfortunately, we have no choice but to deal with the problem here.
American on American violence. We often talk about "suicide bombers" in the context of foreigners in Iraq or Afghanistan, attempting to kill American soldiers or the local civilian population. When we think of planes crashed intentionally into buildings the tragedy of 9/11 in New York comes to mind. Much less talked about is the February 2010 terror attack by Joseph Stack, who rammed a small plane kamikaze-style into an Austin, Texas IRS office, killing himself, federal IRS official Vernon Hunter, and injuring others. While this may be a case of individual insanity triggered by an IRS audit rather than the plot of a terror syndicate, the result is equally horrific.
There has been a spate of such loner type attacks against government officials in Washington, DC and elsewhere. There were shootings at Minority Whip Eric Cantor's Richmond office two weeks ago, near the Pentagon on March 5th, of Michigan's state Congress on February 28th, and against Capitol Hill police near the Senate on July 15th 2009. These haven't gotten as much attention because they were not committed by a Muslim, which was the case in the November 2009 massacre of soldiers at Fort Hood by one of their own, Major Nidal Malik Hassan. But Hassan was a deranged lone ranger too. At some point these losers will need to be accepted as an ugly American truth, a threat in its own right, just as we must recognize that the long string of school shootings since the early 1990's are an almost uniquely American male psychosis.
In March we have seen a sharp increase in terror tactics such as death threats and noose hanging designed to intimidate Democratic Congressmen and government officials subsequent to the passage of healthcare reform legislation. Other Americans have felt the need to express their legal right to bear arms specifically near President Obama's events in the last year. The anti-government movement, egged on by the tea party's fringe and criminally irresponsible rhetoric from people such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck represents a potential powder keg. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the militia movement. Nobody should be surprised that there is a thread that runs through these forces.
Militias are not usually associated by Americans with terrorism, although the Hutaree members have brought this intersection back to the forefront. In fact, the godfather of American terrorism, Timothy McVeigh had both Michigan and militia connections, and killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City federal building specifically because he felt the government was evil. In today's environment, there are many other potential McVeighs and Hutarees out there, misguided into believing that the solution to their disagreements with taxation, various other government policies, or President Obama is to violently attack and intimidate the government itself. Fortunately, the FBI had infliltrated the Hutaree militia and had the ability to prevent an April disaster. This was a strong moment in America's national security and law enforcement strategy, and the story is truly a case of the system working well.
How to Win. Despite what we hear from the likes of Pete Hoekstra or Sean Hannity, the Obama administration in partnership with local and international law enforcement are exacting a punishing toll on enemies of the state both here and abroad. The campaign to assassinate suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia with drone aircraft has been beefed up in the last year and it's destroying scores of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters (sadly along with some innocent civilian collateral). Abdulmutallab failed to light up, but provided valuable intelligence that helped the US government and our allies to roll up his nasty friends. Pakistan has partnered with America to kill or capture at least certain factions of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, including some truly bad motor-scooters such as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The Hutaree was disabled in time to prevent any violence, which hopefully sent a warning message to the other extremist militias throughout the United States. Somali pirates foolish enough to mount US ships in the Gulf of Aden have been killed or captured on multiple occasions at the hands of the US Navy, including a dramatic Navy SEAL rescue authorized by the Pentagon and President Obama. NYPD and the FBI worked in tandem and used a sophisticated network of informants to foil US resident Najibullah Zazi's brazen plan to bomb the New York City subway system in September 2009. There are more successes, most of which we will never know.
America has been fortunate to avoid larger acts of terrorism so far since 9/11 under both administrations. Continued success in preventing the next big attack, as well as the small ones, is going to depend on continued vigilance. This vigilance will require an open mind on the part of law enforcement, national security officials, and the public about where the threat may come from, and what the threat may look like. Dark-skinned and Muslim youths will continue to receive extra scrutiny, but focusing on this demographic as the only terror threat like Fox News does would leave the country highly vulnerable. If Republicans choose to push this issue to wrestle back the upper hand on national security, they will fast make themselves irrelevant to the debate. It will prove that their agenda is centered more on the politics, religion, and race than it is on national security- especially when the party's leaders are losing credibility by fanning the very flames of hatred which can morph into violence.
Our safety depends on recognizing some difficult facts. The War on Terror is long over. The problem cannot be pigeonholed into neat little ignorant worldviews. The problem is not Muslim or Christian, white or brown, left or right, homegrown or foreign-born. It is living in a reality where deranged human beings of all stripes have something to say, and they are right here.
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