SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTING: Read it and weep ...

By Patrick BAHZAD

I was working late last night on Syria - new SITREP to follow soon - when I heard about the San Bernardino events. Just like with the recent Paris attacks, that all too familiar sense of eerie 'déjà vu' set in again.

Today, this shooting is being called a case of "domestic terrorism", which it definitely is, in a very specific way. It is also a case of mislabelling the event, not taking it for what it is, probably in the misguided belief this will make it go away. It won't ...

On the other hand of course, we should not get carried away either, start panicking and blame whole communities or see (domestic) Islamic terrorists at every street corner. However, the careful wording used by officials in recent cases where a radical Islamic background was clearly the driving force should have us wonder.

Is there really no difference when a mass-shooting occurs, regardless of the ideology the shooters pretend to serve ? The US, just like France and Europe, might be in for a tough awakening some day, if politically correct narratives prevent us from calling a spade a spade.

The issue of "gun control" will be raised again in relation with this attack, no question. Whether or not new laws should be implemented is up for the American public to decide. Tighter controls and regulations might certainly have prevented other occurrences of mass-shootings in the past, although not all of them.

However, it is highly questionable whether individuals acting out of a political or ideological background would be discouraged by tougher gun laws. That is probably one important difference in the San Bernardino attack. Besides, gun control is much tighter in Europe, but it didn't prevent the Paris attacks. That is not to say the question should not be raised, but there is a separate issue at stake here, which should not be buried under partisan domestic politics.

On that note, I figured I might republish excerpts from the piece I had drafted in the aftermath of the Chattanooga shooting 'The Many Faces of Jihad' (July 17th 2015), and leave it up to the reader to make up his mind:

• The threat awareness in the US and Europe
  
  The US is in no way immune from home-grown Jihadis and the "crowd-sourcing of terrorists" (a phrase coined by James Comey, Director of the FBI) has opened new recruitment opportunities for the Middle-Eastern sponsors of terrorism.
  
  People in the US (law enforcement agencies and anti-terrorism task forces set aside) tend to considerably underestimate the potential threat they are facing in that regard. The general feeling is that the US is not as exposed as European countries and the large pool of European would-be Jihadis joining ranks with ISIS or Al Qaeda gives Americans a bit of a distorted sense of safety.
  
  Over the years (since 9/11), a number of attacks, or attempted attacks, have been foiled by law enforcement agencies on US soil, some of them just recently. There is no doubt in my mind that the officers in charge of fighting and preventing terrorism in the US are very aware that the threat is real and growing.
  
  This awareness however has not been reflected in the public debate about those issues, where ISIS in particular is mostly seen as a barbaric nuisance affecting the good people of Iraq and Syria, while not being a problem at home.

• A mistaken sense of relative safety
  
  One of the misconceptions the US suffers from is related to a belief many Americans have, according to which Muslims in America are not as likely to adhere to an extremist ideology. The often blamed "exclusion" of Muslims in Western Europe is mentioned as a catalyst for radicalization, one that does not exist in the US, where Muslims are supposedly free to practise their religion and stick to any dress-code they see appropriate, unlike countries like France or Belgium.
  
  The social and economic disenfranchisement of European Muslims also is a recurring argument in the rationale for the large recruitment pool these populations constitute for organisations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. This is true of course and there is a difference in that regard between the US and most of Western Europe. But focusing only on social and economic hardship to explain the rise of Salafism doesn't cut it.
  
  There is another side to that coin, one that observers of Islam in the US are often forgetting. Actually, there are a number of factors that make the US even more likely to see radicalization and jihadization unfold among some of its Muslim populations.
  
  
• Specifics of the Jihadi threat potential in the US
  
  It would be too long to list all those factors here. Some of them are related to American society itself, especially its propensity to produce individuals capable of mass-shootings in the name of a sometimes obscure ideology, or out of a personal grudge.
  
  Others are linked specifically to the structure of the still small but growing Muslim population in the US, in particular the countries of origin of more recent Muslim immigrants. This aspect has gone largely unnoticed, but it is of real significance.
  
  Contrary to Europe, which often has a second or third generation Muslim population coming from former colonies or areas of influence, i.e. countries that are not part of the "heartland" of the current Jihadi organisations, there is a much higher proportion of Muslims in the US who actually come from countries where the Salafi creed that Al Qaeda is preaching, or even the Takfiri version of ISIS, are much more present.
  
  Looking at a break-down by country of origin, the difference between Muslim immigrants in France for example (or French citizens of Muslim/Arabic extraction) and their counterparts in the US is quite obvious: Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Gulf States and others feature prominently among US immigrants, but they are totally absent from the figures regarding France.
  
  All too often also, the large number of European Muslims doing their "Hijra" and joining the "Islamic State" is seen as a benchmark for the domestic threat in European countries, while the US are considered more immune – although not exempt – from such "migrations". This is however a dangerously misguided line of thought.
  
  
• The number of Westeners joining ISIS as a misleading indicator
  
  Obviously, it is not reassuring to know there are hundreds of young Frenchmen, Germans or Brits somewhere in Iraq or Syria, doing who knows what. In the case of France however, and with one notable exception, none of the terrorists who planned or carried out attacks in recent years had fought their Jihad in the Middle East or Afghanistan. None of them, bare one, had ever left the country, but they still managed to enter the famous process of "pre-radicalization, self-identification, radicalization, jihadization".
  
  This may change now, in light of the latest Paris attacks and France's retaliation against ISIS in the Middle-East, but it should not lead us into believing the threat is foreign or external to our own societies.
  
  This also goes for the US, which has a significant number of nationals or legal residents somewhere between Raqqa and Mosul, or in Somalia (around 250 in total). That figure is less worrying than the number of Europeans present in those areas, but it is far from being insignificant.
  
  Combined with today's methods of "crowdsourcing" that social media provide for, an area where ISIS has become more and more proficient, this should certainly be a concern for anyone dealing with such issues.
  
  Another often overlooked factor that makes the US vulnerable is the fact that America is a country where religion is more present in daily life, and is seen as a normal personal feature. The number of Americans who claim adherence to one religious group or another is much higher than in secularized Europe.
  
  
• Conversion and converts, an upcoming trend in America
  
  This sociological pattern results in a higher "turnover" of conversions, with a significant number of US citizens and residents switching to at least one or two other religious beliefs in the course of their lives.
  
  With Islam's growing presence on US soil, the number of Muslim converts is bound to increase as well. Knowing there's always a small fraction of slightly "off balance" people who pick a religion for all the wrong reasons, there is a case to be made here for particular caution when it comes to converts.
  
  As I mentioned above, there are a number of factors that are more specific to the US and plead for a more careful approach to the risk of the home-grown Jihadis. However, the aim of this piece is not to give an complete list of profile features one should be looking for in a prospective Jihadi, but merely to reflect upon certain general considerations related to the latest attack.
  

In San Bernardino last night, police chief Jarrod Burguan said: “We do not have a motive […] They came in with a purpose [...] but we have no information to indicate that this is terrorism in the traditional sense.”

What is terrorism "in the traditional sense" though ? Does it even make sense to talk about terrorism in these terms ? By the same rationale, walking into a concert hall packed with people and shooting indiscriminately into the crowd is not terrorism in the traditional sense either. But it is definitely terrorism.

The simple truth is, terrorism in the traditional sense - if it ever existed - can no longer be used as the benchmark for what might be coming our way. Instead, we need to brace ourselves for the new world of entrepreuneurial terrorism 2.0 ...

 

Note: There seems to have been a problem with some of the fonts used in this piece. Thx to Russell for pointing it out. Hope it has been fixed and the whole piece can now be read by everyone. If not, just drop a line as a comment.

 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

Can a translation be provided?

[philippe]

Wow ! a pretty interesting essay of greeco-english cyphering, indeed... Is there some prize to win ? :)

[jonst]

watching the media coverage/interviews/editorials is like national rorschach test.

[Tyler]

The rhetoric and hair splitting of the MSM has been disgusting with how they were blaming white conservatives. The ant hive mind pulling a u turn was amazing as the Narrative went from evil whites to "Workplace violence".

On the other hand, these fools have just ensured President Donald Trump, so there is that.

[BabelFish]

A man who was USA born, who traveled to the KSA. Off all the things I have heard this morning from the MSM, that point is the most arresting.

This man and his wife gave up raising their daughter, in this suicidal expression of rage. What ever journey they traveled, there does not appear to be any mental illness involved. If he had not been 'provoked' by a workplace dispute, would some other trigger have occurred? I think so. I think we will find these two were along the lines of the Columbine shooters, with the potential for radicalization thrown in to further add to their commitment to kill innocent citizens. What ever nihilistic final point they arrived at, I think it was inevitable that the would go out ala Bonnie and Clyde. What point did that finally tip over to a commitment? That, I believe, will be very instructive if we can discover when and how.

[LeaNder]

Looking forward to your upcoming "new SITREP", Patrick.
"terrorism 'in the traditional sense'", I have been wondering about my basic prejudice around left versus right wing terrorism during the last couple of years. Random attacks on crowds of ordinary people versus representatives of power. But I guess it never worked.

We are told in this case the target were disabled people???

******

But since my fingers are already on the keyboard, can anyone help me to understand WRC's and philippe's response above? Including either one of them. ;)

[Fred]

These were not the conservative white male Christian conservatives the usual msm/acitivists were looking for. Did you notice the list of "mass shootings" being bandied about doesn't highlight any gang related shooting in any of our urban areas?

[confusedponderer]

I think that you put it well when you wrote of 'a mistaken sense of relative safety". The US attitude is that things like IS are someone else's problem in the Middle East and exposed Europe, but not in the US.

That does not mean they are safe. Babak posted an interesting article from Brookings recently, which suggested that the West has been all wrong about IS, and that it always, just like Al Qaeda, has had a streak that encouraged freelancing ops abroad as well:

"... it seems the perpetrators of the Paris attacks were affiliated with the Islamic State, and this operation may actually have been directed from the Islamic State’s top ranks. It is also possible that some or all of them received training in Iraq or Syria (though that has not been established definitively as of now). The degree to which the central leadership of the Islamic State was involved in the operation remains unclear, but if it turns out that they were involved beyond just inspiring the attackers, then I and many of my fellow terrorism analysts got it wrong when we downplayed the terrorism threat to the West emanating from Iraq and Syria.
...
we must also examine another possibility: that this has been their strategy all along, and we just missed it — after all, they have been calling for attacks in the West, and France in particular, for some time now. If that is the case, it is important that we, as analysts, perform an honest assessment of where we went wrong. Did we overestimate the strategic differences between al Qaeda and the Islamic State?"

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/12/02-we-were-wrong-about-isis-williams

Reading between the lines it becomes pretty obvious what the geniusses whose consensus the Brookings article describes were thinking - thus far, the idea seems to have ben that IS was supposedly local - unlike AQ - so they were assumed to be be safe as a surrogate because they would be localised. User-friendly jihadi surrogates. How handy! Was that Bandar's sales pitch?

At the same time when such IS sponsored or encouraged entrepreuneurial terrorism is an issue, the US have displayed no discernable compunction to watch their allies like Turkey, Qatar and the Saudis using Al-Qaedaite groups like IS, Al Nusra or Ansar al Sham as surrogates against their various enemies de jour in places like Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Just as one cannot have his cake and eat it, one cannot sponspor Jihadis outright, or allow them being sponsored by allies, and be safe from them. Rabid dogs are after all impelled to bite.

IS style freelance terrorism is manifest proof that one cannot switch these people on and off as Prince Bandar bragged he could.

[glupi]

Maybe offtopic.

With CitizenUnited at the helm, I - a midget European leftie - want Fred, Tyler, VietnamVet (& Co?) legally armed

Tyler,

please give isometrics a try along with weight-lifting. We need people like you as fit as possible

from 2:41 minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Cx2Hlbbdg

[rjj]

"But it is definitely terrorism."

Is it? Need some pejorative distinctions.

capitalization to distinguish Terrorism from terrorizing [in Terrorist drag]?

suffication: (adj.) terroristic terrorid, (n.) terrorite, terroraud ?

[Patrick Bahzad]

I'll give you as pass, because your post was funny. I'm sure Tyler et all will come up with an equally funny reply, no doubt :-)

[Patrick Bahzad]

Quod erat demonstrandum ... Denial is a powerful drug.

[Patrick Bahzad]

Agree, and think Babak would not have been fooled at any time by the PC narrative so many people are buying into. After all, it is more convenient to believe things are bound to happen elsewhere, preferably thousands of miles away.

We're seeing the same kind of misguided, plain dumbass excuses and truth spinning in some of the comments. A well known phenomenon, "denial" for the sake of a greater good, whatever that is.

[John Minnerath]

What a circle jerk distraction of PC Bull. While our touted Homeland Security, FBI, ya da ya da ignore the obvious with their heads buried, the connections to tracking down networks are disappearing.
Incomprehensible, I still can't believe what I'm seeing happen.

[Patrick Bahzad]

Seems there has been a problem with some of the fonts. Appeared in cyrillic characters on some readers screens ...

[Patrick Bahzad]

WRC,

Hope the problem has been fixed now.

[Kyle Pearson]

Is there any evidence that these two were motivated by Islamist ideology?

So far, i haven't seen any.

It seems far more like a suicide pact between two hopeless people who happen to be Muslim - it's not as if we don't have people like Jim Jones and husband-and-wife serial killer teams to point to.

From what i've read, his family was totally blindsided by his behavior - if he had been espousing Islamist views, one would think they'd not be so surprised, right?

[Patrick Bahzad]

You're one of the unlucky ones to have experienced this problem. Hope it's been fixed now.

Took me a while to figure what you meant, sorry about that. Guess I've burnt a couple of brain-cells in the process !

[Joe100]

PB

Any insight into the ethic/national background of the two last names released - Farook and Malik?

[Patrick Bahzad]

I'm gonna start copy-pasting my replies now: "denial is a powerful drug".

I've been in this business for quite a while, heard all the explanations, excuses (and sometimes outright lies) time and again. The fact his family didn't know doesnt mean sh*t.

Generally (not referring to this case in particular) families who say they didn't know do so because they didn't want to know.

Also, maybe news for you, families or relatives might be lying, not because they are in on it, but for fear of embarassment and humiliation (again talking in general here).

Besides, if your explanation is the right one, why are officials calling this a case of "domestic terrorism" ? Makes no sense ...

[philippe]

No problem Patrick. It was a neuron's refreshing experience, kind of fun !
Anyway, thanks for your job here.

[glupi]

If only Fred, Tyler, VietnamVet could actively unite with kao_hsien_chih, rjj, Valissa

[Patrick Bahzad]

He was a US citizen of Pakistani extraction and had met his wife a few years back through an online dating site. She was from KSA and has been a legal resident ever since she arrived in the US.

Their status as husband and wife has not been totally clarified yet, as far as I know.

[David Habakkuk]

CP, PB:

Back in July 2013, Patrick Cockburn reported on a speech by the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, in which he recalled some – somewhat bloodcurdling – remarks from Bandar about the fate awaiting the Shia.

A really interesting paragraph, however, was the following:

'Dearlove's explosive revelation about the prediction of a day of reckoning for the Shia by Prince Bandar, and the former head of MI6's view that Saudi Arabia is involved in the Isis-led Sunni rebellion, has attracted surprisingly little attention. Coverage of Dearlove's speech focused instead on his main theme that the threat from Isis to the West is being exaggerated because, unlike Bin Laden's al-Qa'ida, it is absorbed in a new conflict that "is essentially Muslim on Muslim". Unfortunately, Christians in areas captured by Isis are finding this is not true, as their churches are desecrated and they are forced to flee. A difference between al-Qa'ida and Isis is that the latter is much better organised; if it does attack Western targets the results are likely to be devastating.'

(See http://tinyurl.com/ltcmcjn .)

Of course Dearlove and people like him do not want to contemplate the possibility that the happy reassurances from Bandar that he and his like could control this particular scorpion so, as it were, it only bit those we don't like were BS. Acknowledging this would raise the question of whether a very great deal of what they and their like have done over the years has been fraught with potential for catastrophe.

For the same reason, one also finds many people in London absolutely desperate to believe that, if they talk nicely to the Saudis, and other Gulf Arabs – and also Erdogan – these people will stop supporting jihadists.

And all that the Saudis have to do to take in people like the editor of the 'FT' is to 'talk the talk' about 'modernising' the country, leaving the question of its involvement in sponsoring Wahabism to one side.

(See a recent long feature entitled 'Saudi Arabia: The wake-up call: 'Ensuring stability will be crucial for Riyadh’s power brokers as they face discontent and war' at http://tinyurl.com/ot9v2qc .)

As the comments on the article indicate, however, people are no longer ready to accept his kind of evasion. The long-term political implications of this are hard to assess, but may be seismic.

[Tyler]

Glupi,

Fred and the Colonel are FB friends with me - they've seen my pictures and can vouch.

But I laughed all the same. I really can't add anything to that video ahaha.