Preventing Lone Wolf's will require a New UN.

The chickens are coming home to roost!

The  "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" strategy in our ‘global war against terrorism’  didn’t work so well.   Somehow they found out where we live.   Using predominately military and intelligence resources predictably backfired.    But some on the right still believe we need to “crush” them over there to ‘win’ this war.

Pre 9-11 efforts to stamp out terrorism were mostly police work and a few cruise missile strikes.   Post 9-11 our military and intelligence agencies were lavished with unrestricted spending to bring ‘terrorists’ to “justice”.    President Obama did ratchet back the military invasion/occupation approach which had morphed into “clear, hold and build” that appeared to succeed.  But, our military capacity for ‘hold and build’ (especially the ‘build’) was lacking in money, expertise, and public/political will.   

As violent extremist attacks increase on our ‘home land’ there are a few important factors to consider.  First, nearly twice as many Americans have been killed on US soil post 9-11 by White supremacy and American anti-government devotees than so called Islamic extremists.  Unfortunately, ISIS’s talented use of the internet to infect and recruit Americans with their poisonous and violent ideology may likely change that.

The four Marines murdered in Tennessee last week is America’s future.   There will be an increase in lone wolf attacks.   It should now be self-evident that ‘killing them over there’ will only increase the number of attacks here.   Dramatic increases in intrusive intelligence collection on Americans will only be mirrored by loan wolf efforts to avoid such data drag nets.  It was recently reported that all of the NSA data collection since 9-11 detected zero domestic ‘terrorist’ plots while New York City’s finest policing efforts detected and stopped over 20 such home grown plots.

After NSA, FBI, and CIA surveillance efforts were unable to detect the murderous intent of Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez it should be clear to every American that we must find a better way to address this metastasizing threat.   Ask two questions.   “Why are they doing this?” And,  “How do they do it?” Given the increasing and unstoppable number of “hows” (means of mass murder), perhaps its time to seriously consider the “why”.   And then formulate a new “how” to minimize the growing global and domestic threat.

An organizational sign on letter released today offers profound insights (http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Statement-FINAL.pdf)

And a Commission report released last month offers a profound ‘how’ to move forward on this and other inevitable national security risks. A brief review of this report offered this week  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tad-daley/an-aging-united-nations-i_b_7814386.html

By now there should be no doubt that it a ‘war’ response to the ‘terrorists’ threat is a primary source of committed souls willing to commit heinous acts of mass murder on American soil.  And, both our ‘war’ efforts apologetic response to ‘collateral damage’ (the murder of innocent Muslims) and the lethal insecurity that our war machine has brought to their cities and country sides would be inherently unacceptable to any culture, society, religion, nation or clan.   

We must stop using the words “terrorism” or “terrorist” to describe a target.  The first is an emotional observation.  The second is an accusation label with no universally agreed upon definition. 

Technically, the attacks on the Tennessee recruiting station were not ‘acts of terrorism’.  Military targets are legitimate targets in ‘war’.  Our ‘war’ waging on what we believe to be ‘legitimate’ targets over there, using drones to target suspected Islamic terrorists (who see themselves as warriors) is actually delivers the emotion of terror to the hearts and minds of many peaceful Muslims.  When their loved ones become collateral damage, the survivors become warriors.    

In a civilized world those who murder intentionally or by accident are called ‘criminals’ or ‘mass murderers’.  Labels like warrior, soldier or terrorists are meaningless for ending the killing.  Those suspected of murder should be treated as suspects.

And “bringing them to “justice” should not mean assassination by drone, drowning, or beheading by explosive cord.  It should mean a legal process established by a democratic process enforcing ‘just’ laws  equally on all with the primarily goal of protecting individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This ideal was originally offered after the horrors of World War II in the unanimously approved Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It was ignored because nations refused to give up their sovereign power to do as they like, anytime they like, to whomever they like.   Now that extremist religious ideologies, corporations and nation states all claim the same autonomy/sovereign right, there needs to be a universal project to limit such power/freedom of abusive actions. 

A world government should be rightfully feared.   But a World Federation should be given a chance.  Achieving it will likely be bloody.  But so has our collective failure to act on this obvious need over the last  70 years since the UN was created.  Now with the exponential growth of increasingly powerful and affordable means of mass murder we must find a way to undermine the desire to kill.   We need to put our faith in justice and the universal protection of human rights, that even our founding fathers agreed belong to all humanity, not just White American males. 

Time is not on our side.  I’m really hoping we are not too late.