New Zealand

I wanted to write a bit about the Mosque shootings in New Zealand this week, but I don't want to get into the absurd gun control arguments.  Really, what I want to talk about is threat.  In the military, that is a noun.  What is the threat?  Meaning, what are the capabilities an enemy has, and what are the probabilities he will use them effectively against us?  This is what Intelligence Officers and Soldiers do in the Army; the evaluate threat.

I have a Masters Degree in Public Administration with a concentration in Homeland Defense.  I am a combat veteran with three tours in Iraq.  If I am not an expert, I am at least a credentialed novice in evaluating the threat in our society.  That is why I write these, and why I train the tiny minority of Americans who actually open their eyes to the realities of the Post-9/11 world.

I don't know if I've said this recently, but the difference between the Post-9/11 world and the pre-9/11 world was that acts of war used to be the exclusive domain of nations.  That changed on 9/11.  Twenty guys with box cutters and pepper spray turned four tools of modern transportation into weapons of mass destruction.  We can all start to understand that--we can probably never fully understand lunatics--but we can understand the effects (as in, battlefield effects) that can be achieved by non-nation states with modern technology.

What very few of us understand is the opposite side of the coin.  In a world where warfare can be conducted by non-state actors, that means defense of the nation states becomes the problem of the citizen, not the government.  There were no government assets onboard any of the four planes hijacked on 9/11.  But on the last one, United Flight 93, there were ordinary citizens who recognized the THREAT of terrorism in a new world, violently birthed that morning.  Led by my hero and inspiration, Todd Beamer, ordinary citizens took the awe-inspiring actions to defend the homeland by resisting the terrorists.

The threat we get.  The response, we still don't understand.  Why weren't there armed security guards at the Mosques in New Zealand?  Terrorists look for soft targets.  They don't attack hardened, impregnable fortresses.  They shoot up a concert from a hotel room, they hijack planes and turn them into missiles, they shoot up places of worship, or our insanely unsecured schools.  They don't confront our aircraft carriers or armored divisions, because they will always lose those fights.  The fights they usually win are against our soft targets.

In the Post-9/11 world, we can't afford to have soft targets.  But, the government can't be everywhere, all the time, protecting every movie theater, supermarket, church or school.  But the threat is real to all of those places.  You know what my education in Homeland Defense taught me?  That WE THE PEOPLE have to become the defenders of the homeland.  New Zealand failed to recognize that, just as we have done so many time since the heroes of United Flight 93 showed us how we are going to have to live in the age of terrorist caliphates and simplistically armed fanatics causing mass casualty events with their evil creativity. 

Every time the lunatics succeed in one of these attacks, more are emboldened.  The only thing that defeats terror is COURAGE.  We The People have to develop COURAGE and recognize that since that fateful Tuesday morning that we swore to Never Forget, it is OUR responsibility individually to stand up to these nut jobs.  It is our responsibility as individuals to be prepared to fight back when one of these lunatics shows up in our town.  Prepared with our equipment, prepared with our training, but most of all, prepared with the mindset that We The People ARE Homeland Defense.  There's a famous story from World War Two as the Germans were advancing during the Battle of the Bulge; a young American paratrooper stopped, started digging a foxhole as all these other units were retreating in a disorganized rout.  He said to the tank commander, "I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going!"

In the Post-9/11 world, We The People must all try to live-up to the worlds of Paratrooper Martin of the 82nd Airborne.  When these coward-ass nut jobs show up in our towns, churches, mosques or synagogues, We The People must be prepared, as the heroes of United Flight 93 were, to say, "I'm an AMERICAN, and this is as far as the bastards are going!"

That is the new truth in the Post-9/11 world.  The threat is not massed tanks or nuclear missiles.  The threat is fanatical individuals hell bent on killing, fueled by hatred, desiring only to terrorize.  The only way to defeat terror is with COURAGE, and we must all be prepared to stand-up.  New Zealand, I feel for you, but like us, you have to come to the realization that you need your people to be hard, so that there are no soft targets for the lunatics to exploit.  We have to be harder than the fanatics who seek to destroy us.  We must be prepared to defend the homeland when it is attacked in our presence.  Above all, we must have the only weapon that defeats terror: COURAGE.

Remember the fallen!

Soule
Easy6