The real barometer of the terrorist threat is not the number of successful attacks, but the number people under their ideological influence, planning, giving aid, and/or knowing of likely attacks and failing to report them. The humans who execute or abet the deeds are the essential tools of the terror equation, but they are programmed by others. We have to understand, counter, and eliminate the ideological connection between the propagandists-recruiters and the tools they target.
We’re losing that battle because we are not even fighting it, a former high-ranking FBI executive recently called it “a lack of imagination.” Evidence of our failure goes beyond attacks – according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, 2015 saw a dramatic spike In Islamic extremism arrests in the U.S. The report stated, “Eighty-one U.S. residents were linked to Islamic extremist plots and other activity in 2015. This is nearly triple the total of each of the past two years: 28 individuals living in the U.S. were linked to such terrorism in all of 2014 and 22 in 2013.”
A year ago, FBI Director James Comey stated that more than 200 Americans had traveled or attempted to travel to join extremist groups in Syria and Iraq and in October “there were 900 open investigations of suspected homegrown extremists, the majority of which are ISIS related.” I suspect there are many more now.
We must learn, primarily, how individuals are recruited and radicalized. In my opinion, self-radicalization is an illusion in almost every case; even when there is no direct training, contact or discussions the seeds of radicalization have been planted all around like a mine field, they just sit there waiting for a vulnerable person to pick them up and embrace them. In that way the recruit – who will sacrifice their life as a tool of terror – is sometimes the first victim.
Necessity is the mother of invention; ISIS and other nefarious organizations are constantly inventing and refining ways to recruit and radicalize followers; they are inventive because they have to be. At the same time we suffer the curse of all institutionalized bureaucracies; group-think. If we can’t change and adapt faster than our enemies we will make little, if any, real progress.