Within a week of
setting off two bombs in Boston, two brothers, Moslems from the Russian
Caucasus, were identified and caught. But now questions are being asked
about why the American FBI did not discover how radical one of the
brothers, 26 year old Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become, even after receiving
an alert from Russian intelligence that Tamerlan had become an Islamic
radical and might be dangerous. Russia has centuries of experience with
radicals, gangsters and rebels from the Caucasus.
It may be a while, if ever, before all the facts are known on
this incident. It could simply be that Tamerlan was simply one of many
potential terrorists that become known to the FBI, but was not
considered likely to be dangerous enough to warrant regular monitoring.
The FBI is alerted to lots of potential terrorists and does not have the
resources to monitor them all. This is common problem with police and
military intelligence organizations. The FBI does not discuss how it
deals with sort of thing, because that would give potential terrorists
an edge in avoiding detection.
There is another problem the FBI, and all federal
counter-terror operatives have to deal with and that is the U.S.
government policy (since the 1990s) to play down the role of Islam in
Islamic terrorism. To many people that sounds absurd, but it represents a
policy of trying to counter Islamic terrorist accusations that efforts
to destroy the terrorists is just an infidel (non-Moslem) excuse to make
war on Islam. This issue recently became a public controversy when the
U.S. government continued to deny granting military personnel killed or
wounded in a 2009 terrorist attack the award for combat wounds (the
Purple Heart medal). The U.S. government refuses to categorize the
November 5, 2009 attack in Ft Hood as a terrorist action. In that
incident a Moslem U.S. Army officer (Major Nidal Hassan, a psychiatrist)
shot and killed 13 people at a clinic, all the while yelling "God is
great" in Arabic. It was later revealed that Hasan had a long history of
Islamic radicalism, which his army superiors ignored. Now, in an
apparent effort to not offend Moslems, the U.S. government refuses to
designate Hasan's murders as terrorism and thus his victims cannot
receive the Purple Heart. The government is calling the Hasan incident
workplace violence and military victims of that kind of violence are not
eligible for a Purple Heart.
The Hasan controversy has been going on for over two years,
with the government resisting demands from military personnel and
Congress that the Department of Defense follow its own regulations
regarding military victims of terrorist attacks and give the Purple
Heart to the Ft. Hood dead and wounded. In response to these
Congressional efforts, the civilian leadership of the Department of
Defense has now been ordered to oppose the new law on the grounds that
it would also deny the attacker a fair trial.
The U.S. Army has reacted in other ways to major Nidal Malik
Hasan's 2009 attack. This was obviously the act of an Islamic terrorist,
although the U.S. government initially tried to explain it as just the
act of a lone madman. But the subsequent investigations (army, FBI, and
so on) made it clear that this is what terrorist attacks often are. The
investigations recovered Hasan’s communications in which he was told
that acting individually would still be “jihad” in the name of global
Islamic domination. Meanwhile, the investigations also revealed that he
had not made a secret of his beliefs and that many of his peers,
subordinates, and superiors had complained about his Islamic radical
beliefs and verbal outbursts. The guy was scary, but nothing was done
because of the government policy of downplaying religion as much as
possible in matter involving Islamic terrorism.
The army investigation of the Hasan attack did acknowledge
that this policy of downplaying the religious aspect of Islamic
terrorism fostered an atmosphere of political correctness that
underpinned most of the bad decisions that enabled Hasan to stay in
uniform and even get promoted. This recognized that in the army, as in
any large organization, all the rules are not written down. In the army
many of the unwritten rules come in the form of "the commanders'
intent." Sometimes this "intent" is spelled out, but in many cases
subordinate commanders have to figure it out.
In the Hasan case the commanders' intent was that Moslem
officers, especially doctors, were to be kept happy and in uniform. When
in doubt, look the other way and hope for the best. In the case of
Hasan no one expected the guy to turn into a mass murderer. But, then,
Hasan's superiors were encouraged to be optimistic about their Moslem
problem child. So Hasan's radical rants and abusive behavior towards
non-Moslems was, if not ignored, certainly played down. Questions are
being asked about whether the FBI ignored indications that Tamerlan
Tsarnaev had been radicalized (as the Russians reported) so as not to
risk accusations that the United States was persecuting Moslems for
their beliefs.
In the meantime army commanders have been ordered to pay
attention to religious or political activities of their subordinates and
sound off if radical or dangerous behavior appears to be in the works.
This is a lot to ask from officers who know that some bad publicity not
only makes the army look bad but damages career prospects.
Would any of this have caught Hasan before he went at it with
his murderous intentions? Probably; as Hasan made no secret of his
Islamic radical attitudes. Some of his fellow soldiers reported this but
nothing came of this. Now, at least on paper, something should happen.
But, already there are complaints about medical personnel being required
to report troops who indicate potentially violent behavior. Civil
rights groups are questioning whether the army can punish, or even
investigate, troops exercising their constitutional right to free speech
or practicing religion as they choose to.
Commanders are caught between stopping another massacre and
getting accused (especially in the media, which loves stuff like this)
of violating the civil rights of soldiers and their civilian dependents
living on base. Officers will be tempted to back off, rather than risk
their career on a hunch.
Commanders closest to the potential problem are
supposed to pass their findings up the line, with the FBI now sharing
this information. But the media will head for the source and the
officers in the line of fire know it.
The FBI is now being accused of backing off on monitoring
Tamerlan Tsarnaev because of the possibility that the government might
be accused of persecuting a Moslem for simply being devout. The FBI has
grounds for fearing this sort of thing. In the last year the New York
Police Department has been facing growing criticism for its policy of
aggressively seeking out and monitoring potential Islamic radicals. The
New York police commanders have not backed off, and listed a long list
of terrorist conspiracies that were disrupted because of the energetic
monitoring of Moslems to detect radicals before they could become
killers.
While Nidal Hasan may have been stopped with more aggressive
monitoring, not enough is known about what the Tsarnaev brothers were
doing while unmonitored and preparing for the terrorist attacks. It may
turn out to be another Hasan case, or not. In any event it’s another
example of how close many successful terror attacks in the West come to
being detected and disrupted before the terrorists actually act. The
U.S. has detected and disrupted dozens of attacks in the last two
decades. The only ones that become big news are the ones that avoid
detection, or any police action and proceed to kill people.
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