The "lone wolf" element of terrorism is often used as an argument against spending resources to go after militant groups overseas. Indeed, it is pretty much conventional wisdom these days that no matter what we do to disrupt militant groups like al Qaeda, the threat of terrorist attacks against the West will not be diminished, since all it takes is the theoretical lone actor to decide to take international politics into his own hands. It is even argued that the targeting of these groups will result in more attacks - a sort of backlash effect brought on by sympathetic but unaffiliated individuals.

The reality, as this author points out, is that major terror attacks - like 9/11 - are pretty much exclusively the work of well-funded, well-organized groups. It would seem, then, that terrorism is not, as some would say, just an ineradicable part of daily life given that anyone could pull off an attack at any time. Rather, it would seem that, since major terrorist attacks are overwhelmingly carried out by organizations, the eradication (or at least disruption) of these groups would have a significant impact, if not solve the problem entirely.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-lone-wolf-20110105,0,5668349.story

Selected quotes:

Quote :

"But should the American public panic over this shadowy enemy? Is the lone wolf really so scary after all? Not if its record of lethality is any indication. The four lone wolf attacks since Sept. 11 managed to kill just one civilian, a brave onlooker who bull-rushed Major Hasan with a chair before backup could arrive. Three of the four attacks — including that one — were actually cases of fratricide directed against fellow American soldiers. And the perpetrators used weapons no more powerful than a gun. Historically, lone wolf misfires have greatly outnumbered massacres. Since the advent of international terrorism in 1970, none of the 40 most lethal terrorist attacks has been committed by a person unaffiliated with some terrorist group, according to publicly available data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and stored at the University of Maryland. In fact, lone wolves have carried out just two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist incidents over the last four decades. Instead of looking like Sept. 11, which required 19 men and other resources from the al-Qaida leadership, most lone wolf attacks kill just a single, unlucky bystander or nobody at all. American politicians and counterterrorism officials are particularly afraid of lone wolves operating within the United States. To date, however, such homegrown terrorists have taken just six Americans a year. Any deaths are too many, of course, but their low numbers from lone wolves hardly amount to a national nightmare. ... Forecasting terrorism is even trickier because its practitioners aim to terrorize countries by striking seemingly at random. And yet, lone wolf attacks are nothing to lose sleep over if the past is prologue. If anything, the American public can rest assured that al-Qaida's growing reliance on lone wolves portends its organizational demise — from the post-Sept. 11 international backlash against its grizzly methods, Predator strikes on its core leadership, and endless string of political failures."

[Edited on January 6, 2011 at 9:25 AM. Reason : [quote]]

1/6/2011 9:24:40 AM

^Sounds like a good time for a surge then

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/06/afghanistan.us.marines/index.html?hpt=T1

Quote :

"Official: More Marines headed to Afghanistan By the CNN Wire Staff January 6, 2011 10:04 a.m. EST STORY HIGHLIGHTS * The Marines will be on the ground for a few months * They will help solidify coalition security gains * The additional Marines will go to the Kandahar and Helmand provinces"

1/6/2011 11:18:41 AM

A few months is hardly time to integrate into the society to really learn what the hell needs to be done.

Hopefully the troops already there can handle that and these new troops will simply free more of the currently deployed troops.

1/7/2011 9:57:29 PM