Terrorism, or Something

Nearly a year between posts?  Pathetic.

If you want to see the difference between CNN and Fox News' approach to journalism, look no further than their 5:00 headline news hours last evening, when they responded to the attacks in Chattanooga.

On CNN you could see Wolf Blitzer talking to journalists on the scene, basing the discussion on witnesses, authorities and other experts.  He focused on what was known and could be verified, and took care to describe Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez as "the alleged gunman" or "suspected gunman," even if everyone was pretty certain he did it.

Meanwhile on Fox News you had Bret Baier introducing the story, then turning to a panel of conservative pundits so they could give us their opinions on it.  This was mainly an opportunity for the perpetually-scowling Charles Krauthammer to complain that President Obama is once again describing the incident as a "lone gunman" situation because the president is too limp-wristed to immediately interpret the shooting as another battle in our eternal war against radical Islam.

One network deals with facts, the other opinions.  One is out to report on reality, the other to create a specific reality for its viewers to live in.

Was it an act of terror?  Hard to say at this point, we're still working out why someone who lived in a quiet neighborhood, got a degree as an electrical engineer, and brought up some kids would suddenly pick up a rifle and shoot up a recruiting center and Navy facility.  But the authorities are treating it as a potential terrorist attack, and it's not an unreasonable assumption to make.  The suspected shooter was a Muslim, if I heard the news right he hadn't been employed since 2012, and he made several trips to the Middle East over the past few years.  This would fit the pattern of "normal Muslim disaffected by life in America and radicalized into a murderer" that's going on these days.  But again, we haven't confirmed that yet, so for all we know he was radicalized by the Westboro Baptist Church and set off by the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage.

But back to the question - was it terror?  I've taken classes on the subject and can only rub my temple wearily.

Terrorism is supposed to be a dialogue.   There's a strong Group A, a country or government or something, and a weak Group B, a revolutionary movement or insurgency or the like.  Group B cannot get Group A to change policy on its own, but instead they target something else, like Group A's civilian population, or Group A's ally Group C.  "Do what we want," Group B says, "or more people will die."  The idea is that between Group A's desire to protect what Group B is attack and that population's outrage that Group A can't protect them, it will have no choice but to bow to their demands.

Now, this Abdulazeez fellow - a Muslim, yes, might have been radicalized by ISIS or whoever, yes.  But what was he saying?  What was his purpose behind shooting up these places?  We haven't found a video he made explaining his actions yet, or any social media posts warning of it.  I think I heard that ISIS' twitter account tried to take credit for it, but that hasn't been verified yet either.

If he was another ordinary citizen convinced to murder on behalf of ISIS, I guess he's a terrorist, since they're a terrorist organization trying to change the United States' behavior.  But if he was then he didn't do a very good job of advertizing it, and was annoyingly vague on what he wanted us to do.  Perhaps stop the airstrikes against ISIS targets?  Cease our support of the regimes ISIS is fighting against?  Cover up our bikini-clad supermodels? 

Another possibility is that Abdulazeez bought into ISIS' (and Krauthammer's) belief that America and Islam exist in natural conflict, that our respective values are incompatible and inevitably lead to violence.  In this case he would be killing Americans for the sake of killing Americans, because what, are we all supposed to renounce our citizenship and Western liberal values in favor of the extreme fundamentalist Islam ISIS espouses?

But if that's the case, why did he choose a recruitment center and Navy facility, as opposed to randomly opening fire in some public area?  Why these two military targets?

See, a uniform makes the question of whether a given act of violence was terrorism or not a bit more complicated.  Let's say Group B blows up a bunch of vehicles with a roadside bomb.  If they were buses belonging to Group A's civilian population as part of a campaign to get Group A to alter it's behavior, it's clearly an act of terror.  If they were tanks and humvees belonging to Group A's military that's occupying Group B's country, then it's an example of asymmetrical warfare - the point of a uniform is to announce that you're a valid target in the game of "War" you're playing. 

But in this case these military victims (condolences to the families of Thomas Sullivan, Squire Wells, David Wyatt, and Carson Holmquist) were in America, not currently fighting anyone or oppressing anybody.  They were arguably the instruments of American policy, but weren't executing it at the moment, so that puts them in a strange place - they're not quite like a civilian population terrorists attack to put pressure on a government, but they aren't active combatants in a war zone.  If Abdulazeez was at "war with America" or "punishing America for its crimes" or anything, he was unusually specific in how he expressed that.

All this to say, it's unclear if this was an act of conventional terrorism or not, but as we've seen in cases like the Fort Hood shooting, it's close to the sort of terrorism we get these days.  Really, we need to wait and get the whole story before making a judgment.

Hear that, Fox News?