Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Two Problems: 1. America's out-of-control Weapons of Mass Murder; 2.The Metastasis of ISIS




Following the San Bernardino massacre on December 2, many Americans feel that “something has changed,” that “something new has happened.” That’s because this time, the perpetrators were a Muslim couple who are said to have been radicalized, presumably by Isis propaganda.

However, As Marcos Breton noted in his December 6 article in the Sacramento Bee, San Bernardino does NOT open a new chapter. As Breton writes, “Some may say that terrorism is back in America. But it has already been here for quite some time.” San Bernardino may drive Americans even deeper into fear, and this may become “the new normal,’ but this is not logical.

This year alone, 462 people have been killed in mass shootings in America. San Bernardino was just the latest rampage. Some of the assailants have been native-born white supremacists or right-wingers, some have been Muslims, and most of these aberrant individuals’ motives are unclear. That’s why I suggested in my previous blog that we should try to capture more of them alive, so as to find out what makes them tick. Almost all of them have been native born, including the Fort Hood mass murderer Nidal Hasan and now Syed Farook (but the Tsarnaev brothers, Boston Marathon attack, were foreign-born). So far, it is wrong to say that much of the mischief in this country is caused by (Muslim) immigrants.

Breton is right when he writes that we have been terrorized for a long time. The ONE thing that all of these terrorists have in common is that they obtained weapons of mass murder easily and usually legally, be they abortion clinic murderers (Colorado Springs’ Robert Dear), Islamic zealots (Farook), racists (Charleston’s Dylann Roof) or something else.

Americans once again react in panic, running to gun shops and adding to a national arsenal which will, far from making them safer, only INCREASE the already astronomical rate of deaths by guns. 

Congress can’t even pass legislation that would expand background checks at gun shows and purchases from online dealers, or limit gun ownership for people on no-fly lists and other watch lists. A few decades ago, such laws would have been possible. Today, no more.

Consider the following astounding statistics:(Sacramento Bee, December 6, 2015; New York Times; FBI Uniform Crime Reports; Murder in the US; Suicide by Guns):

Since the 9/11 attacks:

Number of deaths on American soil from jihadi terrorism: 45;

Number of murders by white supremacists and other right-wing extremists: 48;

“Conventional” murders: 220,000 - of which 155,000 by guns.

Add to this suicides: 600,000 of which 385,000 by guns.

Plus accidental gun deaths: 7,000.

Total number of gun deaths in America since 2001: 547,000 That’s more deaths than those in World Wars I and II combined.

These statistics mean that the main problem of mass violence in this country is NOT Muslim terrorism, or terrorism of any sort. So far, it is MURDER and generalized gun violence, aided and abetted by fear-mongering media and politicians who drive the public to panic and to acquire ever more weapons of mass murder....

....and then I was reminded of the metastasis of Daesh (=Isis). In one year, the number of western recruits to Isis has more than doubled, to over 30,000. There is a consensus among experts about this estimate. (See: European Fighters in Syria More than Double).

Here are some specifics:
From Tunisia:          6,000
From Saudi Arabia: 2,500
From Russia:           2,400
From Turkey:          2,100
From France:          1,700
From the United Kingdom: 760
From Germany:         760
From Belgium:          470
From the US:             250
From 77 other countries: 13,060
Total:                               30,000

Because nearly a third of these people RETURN to their western countries of origin, some countries now have a nightmare on their hands, including  France and Belgium. Most of these people  are not even radicalized Muslims, but criminalized youngsters who seek meaning, belonging and adventure. The largest increase, by the way, is from Russia.  So, yes, Europe has a problem.

In 2014, the world suffered a frightening outbreak of Ebola. Through swift international action, that epidemic was successfully contained. The Daesh outbreak reminds me of that event. I hope that the world is as successful in its response to the current crisis. leave comment here
© Tom Kando 2015

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The comparison to the Ebola outbreak is not quite correct. ISIS has been around for quite a while. I would compare it to a cancer growth. There were plenty of warning signs for the West to stop the tumor from growing, but now it has metastasized. All we can do now, is watch in horror. We had our chance and we blew it.

csaba said...


Sad news: For the international effort, Ebola was a single virus. The Daesh virus is multiform:
- Sunnis vs. Shiits
- Turks vs. Kurds
- Pro & contra Bachars
- Big $ made in the oil and antiques black markets flowing through Turkey that
WE WESTERNERS BUY!!
With our short sighted self-centeredness, we are destroying ourselves!

THE UN SHOULD FORBID ALL RELIGIONS!.....Utopia.
The god concept is destroying our tiny speck of natural marvel in (one of) the universe(s).!

Gordon said...

Tom-- You provide a lot of good statistics as usual. You mention correctly that most ISIS fighters are not radicalized Muslims, but youngsters seeking meaning, belonging, and adventure. Part of this is "jobs." ISIS fighters seem to paid out of their oil revenues and donations from wealthy Arab supporters whose proxy wars they are fighting. It would be a good statistic to learn what the pay increases for people joining ISIS amounted to. It might shed further light on the issue.

Anonymous said...

Since the CDC stats for 2013 show that the overall death rate in the US was 821.5 per 100,000 (with leading causes being heart disease, cancer, and repository diseases), the homicide rate of 5 per 100,000 is not particularly disconcerting (especially considering that the white rate is only 2.5 per 100,000). I would not want to give up my 2nd amendment rights in an unproductive effort to reduce this figure. Thank God for the NRA!

Chuck said...

Tom: I could not agree more! Great read.

Tom Kando said...

The reactions to my “dual” article are interesting: The liberal impulse and the conservative self-preservation impulse bump into each other.

That’s why I wrote about these two problems simultaneously. With all the violence and the media-induced panic, there are two reactions: (1) the continued liberal focus on gun control and emphasis on the need NOT to engage in racist policies; (2) the conservative fear of Muslim terrorism - increasingly justified in Europe but still more paranoid than realistic in the US. Two ideologies clash.

In America, Donald Trump is the ugliest expression of the latter reaction. President Obama’s reaction is the best, most measured and most intelligent response imaginable. I support him 100%.

The European equivalents of Donald Trump - people like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Viktor Orban in Hungary - are not as insane as the American tycoon, because over there, the threat is more real.

However, all those right-wing nativists share one thing with the American right-wing gripers (for example Anonymous 1, above): They have no clue as to a solution. They have no idea as to what we should be doing from here on forward, and there is not a single thing they could have done better than what Obama has done so far. “We had our chance and we blew it” is utter nonsense. It takes time to mount effective countermeasures to world problems. It did so in World War Two. There is no question that we will win this fight.

Gordon makes good points, as always. Anonymous 2 does not. The sacro-sanctity of the 2nd Amendment does not supersede that of life itself. Once again, he shows that to him, black lives don’t matter.

To those among you who question the analogy with last year’s Ebola crisis: Obviously, Ebola and Isis are entirely different problems. I merely brought that up to indicate that humanity has a way of solving problems, be it Ebola, Isis, climate change or Fascism. There is both the worst and the best in us. The world stage currently features the decency and the intelligence of such men as Obama, the evil of ISIS, and the imbecility of people like Donald Trump. In the past, decency and intelligence have usually won, and I have to believe that they will do so in the future.

richard_schmitt@charter.net said...

The suggestion to try to capture perpetrators of gun violence alive strikes me as very important. Not being a police officer I have no idea whether that is feasible or not.

The very large number of murders suggests to me that we should differentiate different kinds of murders: family violence; gang violence; crazy violence (perhaps the recent shooting at Planned Parenthood) murders in the course of robbery.

In all these cases we have different phenomena that need their own analysis and their own efforts to mitigate the problems that lead to murder. Family violence requires different remedies from gang violence. Murders in the course of robbery maybe connected to addiction and we need to confront those problems separately.

Tom Kando said...

Splendid comment. I couldn't have said it better. You are totally right.

Here is something off the top of my head:

You get your hands on some of those ridiculously brainwashed children turned into suicide bombers, who have been told that paradise awaits him, with 70 virgins or whatever. You somehow deprogram them. Deprogramming has worked with people kidnapped by other cults. It must be possible to find ways to convince at least some of these youngsters that there IS NO paradise awaiting them after they blow themselves up, along with dozens of innocent citizens. That life is ALL there is; that death is NOT good, either for others or for them.

This field of endeavor is crying out for the science of Psychology to go to work. They recently liberated several hundred people who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram, many of them children, presumably on their way to becoming brainwashed suicide bombers...

Anonymous said...

Yes, we did have many chances and we blew it. Obama should have realized that leaving Nouri-al Maliki at the wheel in Iraq, knowing what kind of Sunni hater he was, was a big mistake. Maliki asked Obama many times for help. He didn't get it. We neither approved nor disapproved of his purging methods. We just turned away and pretended the problem didn't exist. Until it was too late.

Tom Kando said...

Well, if you are going to talk about all the mistakes this country has made in the past, of course. We are largely responsible for the very problem of Isis ITSELF, by destabilizing Iraq. It started with our totally unnecessary invasion of that country, then dismantling its armed forces by the Bush-appointed Paul Bemer. President Obama was elected to stop wars, not to continue or start new ones. Another reason that we left no residual American forces in Iraq is that the Nouri-al Maliki government insisted on the right to try US soldiers. We could add to the list of our mistakes the fact that we built up AlQaida as it fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. We have made many mistakes, no doubt about it, regardless of who was in charge. But I don’t agree that it’s too late to learn from our errors and to fix the problem.

Anonymous said...

But how do you fix the problem if you are unwilling to engage? This is a time in history when America SHOULD engage. This country suffers from the 'Iraq Syndrome', a fear of repeating the mistakes we made in Iraq. If America doesn't step up to the plate, nobody else will. We are the only ones that have the capacity. Unfortunately, without a policeman on the beat, the vermin is going to come out of the woodwork and nothing will be able to stop the damage they will create.

Tom Kando said...

I reluctantly agree. Basically, America has been the world’s policeman since 1917, when it entered World War One, picking up the role from Britain. I am one of those who see that, on balance, the world has been the better for it, not the worse.

The problem now is that this country is reaching its limits. The Yale historian Paul Kennedy coined the expression “imperial overreach” or “overstretch,” with Imperial Spain as an analogy: That country - “Number One” at one time, took it upon itself to safeguard the status quo and the existing world order militarily and economically, and this caused it to gradually go broke and to become poor and powerless...

I worry about America shouldering too much, in a world that is increasingly difficult to police. Yes, Isis is an abomination, and it must be defeated. At the same time, America must take care of its internal conditions - poverty, inequality, crime, a rotting infrastructure and educational system, a mediocre level of public health, etc. How do we afford both guns and butter? I don’t have the answers.

Anonymous said...

I don't think the two are necessarily opposed. You cannot have a free society without power to defend it. The current situation is about the perception that America is not willing to use its power to safeguard our way of life and that emboldens extremists. Look at liberal Europe: how long can it stay liberal without the ability to defend its borders, without a working immigration policy? We don't need boots on the ground to show the world that we are still capable of handling the bad guys.

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