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June 29, 2003

Warbaby says:

Is the war in Iraq training a new generation of domestic terrorists?

Here's an unsettling thought.  The last go-round in the Gulf produced at least three spectacular domestic terrorists:  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City) and John Mohammed (DC sniper killings).  Both McVeigh and Mohammed were reported to be unbalanced by their experience during the Gulf War. 

Likewise, the Vietnam war produced some real problems as well.  Louis Beam, the promoter of the Leaderless Resistance strategy, comes to mind.  There were several other instances related to Vietnam that were described as "lone nut" violence instead of terrorism.  Nowadays quite a few of the post-war reaction cases from Vietnam would certainly be investigated as terrorism.

Furthermore, consider things like the rash of intra-family violence among troops returning from Afghanistan.

The levels of stress on our troops is quite high and several sources report that the training and conditioning of troops for agressive behavior is more severe than in the past.  Combine this with the continuing spread of anti-government ideologies through terrorism-related conspiracy theories and the encouraging (or at least failure to suppress) of activities like vigilante border partrols which combine racism with xenophobia.

So here is a question only time will answer:  How many domestic terrorists will the War on Terrorism produce?  As we learned from the Oklahoma City experience, even one or two can be a real problem.