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PeonForHer -> RE: Munich Mall Shooting (7/22/2016 4:30:54 PM)
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FR,
/Begin ramble:
To be honest, I think the game-plan nowadays is radically different to what we've become accustomed. Or, at least, that's how we should think.
In the old days, we could think in terms of some kid joining a group, getting trained up either locally or overseas, then returning to cause mayhem. That's vaguely how *I* always imagined it, anyway. You had conventional armies, where some 17 year old lad went off, signed up, got trained, wore a uniform, then fought. On the flip side, you had a smaller number of 17 year olds who'd get entranced by a radical idea, go abroad to some country in Africa or the Middle East that few of us could pinpoint on a map, get trained by a terrorist group, come back, then do some aggressive stuff as ordered by his commander.
Now, though, we have the fab technologies - most important of which is the great Internet. Say you're a psychopath who fancies a nice bit of murdering, but isn't quite ready for it in the head. All you need do is go on the Net and find the ideology of your choice - whichever one fits with your personal collection of hatreds. Whatever characterises that collection - you will find a website, or many websites, that support it. Having your ideology nicely sorted out, you move onto your strategy. If purpose-built weapons aren't available; there'll be plenty of ideas for improvising them. If your plan requires more people, you can seek them out pretty easily, even without the 'Dark Net'.
After you've done your deed, some terrorist group or another may claim that you were 'one of its agents'. There's no way for the rest of us of telling if their claim is true or not. And perhaps it doesn't even matter. You could locate the proclaimed 'leader' of said terrorist group, bomb his HQ and kill him and all his henchmen ... but, still, the ideology is out there, on the Net, waiting to be hungrily lapped up by the next psychopath to come along.
I'm not sure where we go with this phenomenon. One thing I'm steadily becoming convinced of, though, is that of the old line, favoured amongst war historians, that generals fight the last war, rather than the present one. We saw that in WW1, with generals who hadn't quite grasped what this 'new fangled' tech of machine guns could do; we saw it in WW2, with military leaders who hadn't really understood what aircraft loaded with huge bombs could 'achieve'. Thereafter, we saw it with conventional armies trying to grapple with guerrillas, against whom they couldn't 'fight', in any sense that those conventional armies understood the word 'fight'. (As Kissinger said, 'the conventional army loses if it does not win; the guerilla wins if he does not lose'.)
All the guerillas have to do is make it so miserable for the conventional army that it gives up and fucks off home. That's what happened in Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese hearts were were *much* more in it than were those of their Western enemies. But those NVs were mere softies compared to today's ISIS-followers. They were probably also mainly what we'd call sane, versus the sort of frothing, psychopathic killer that goes on the rampage for one reason or another, today.
These evil shits aren't doing their stuff 'conventionally' - we can't assume we have a decent chance of stopping them by thinking and operating in conventional terms, either.
I'm no military expert. All I really know is 'New ideas, folks, new ideas!'
/End ramble.
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