A Plan for Responding to the Next Terrorist Attack

By now I think any of us can write all the stories for the news broadcasts for  the inevitable next terrorist attack:

1/ "Bombs explode at ...[fill in the blank: airport, shopping mall, train station, subway, bus, soccer game]... and emergency response is swift and heroic and it is not immediately clear who is behind the attack, but ISIS takes credit."

Got that?  
Be sure to include the five second video, someone captured on his smart phone at the time of the attack, showing smoke and people running, and show this in endless loops,  as if we are seeing  "breaking news" every five minutes.

2/ Police are deployed to airport, shopping malls etc, in the best  classic closing-the barn-door-after-the-horse-has-escaped manner. 
3/ Terrorism experts are interviewed about what this all means and they say what this means is we have suffered another terrorist attack and there may be more but we cannot say exactly when or where.
4/ Public officials issue statements calling the attacks cowardly and reassuring the public this isn't the fault of public officials.
5/ Donald Trump says, "I told you so."
6/ Some officials remind us we need to engage Muslims to help root out and identify potential disaffected young Muslims who may be radicalized.

The facts are these:
1/  Why They Do The Things They Do

In much of Europe, France, Belgium, England, Germany, Muslims account for only 7.5% of the population but comprise 65% of the prison population, which means young Muslim men (and sometimes women) are unemployed, bored, disaffected and attracted to any bad boy who raises a flag and pays attention to them. 
Up to 14% of  Muslims in Europe say they are attracted to the message of radical Islam. But about 7% of non Muslim youth--the hard core "losers"--also say they are attracted, suggesting that there is a bad boy culture inhabited by people  who simply want  to disrupt a society they think keeps them down.

2/ Predicting the Next Attack: Good Luck With That

ISIS likely does not plan San Bernadino or even Brussels from some central nerve center, but just acts as a cheerleader for individual malcontents who want to strap on a suicide vest, or go hijack an airplane and none of that takes much in the way of money transfers or central office organization. 

 A bunch of disaffected young men who have been spurned by blonde women in the Western cities where they live  can now  go out and blow something up in revenge. No blondes in this life, but plenty of virgins awaiting in the next.

Sexual frustration, envy, economic despair may play a role in some of these bombers and shooters, but when they  have no central command and control you have about as much chance of intervening in the next attack as you have in preventing the next mugging or convenience store hold up,  because these events are just too random and unconnected. At least with banks and convenience stores you can have security cameras. 

This is no war we are fighting. We are fighting individual deviants who are connected only by their desperation and inclination toward violence, as are many street thugs, who get their kicks through violence.

3/ Do We Have a War of Cultures?

If only 7.5% of young Muslims sympathize with ISIS and the idea of killing people randomly in the name of Allah, that is still maybe a million people. And it's hard to keep track of that many people, even if we knew who they were.

4/ Our Relation to the Muslim World:

In some parts of the world we have Muslims who are supposedly joining us in fighting the Taliban, ISIS or Al Qaeda who are themselves pretty hideous, like the Afghan police who chained young boys to beds in their police barracks so they could rape them at night for fun and pleasure.  Allies like this just make your skin crawl and at some point we have to ask ourselves if they are worth it.

Throughout larger portions of the Middle East, women are treated like possessions, regarded as the source of shameful lust and kept covered and imprisoned at home and although people in these cultures may not hate us or even think much about us, we have a hard time respecting them and they sense that, and we will never be friends. 

But we have substantial numbers of Muslims living in this country, in Detroit, New York, Boston who are fully integrated, who share our values about treating women well, who are doctors and lawyers and professors and contribute substantially to our nation.  We have no reason to alienate these people and every reason to embrace and celebrate them.

5/ Get Used to It: The Inevitable

We will continue to have bombings and shootings like Paris, and San Bernadino and Brussels for years to come, but none of them threaten the existence of our Republic.  This is not like the London Blitz or Panzer divisions sweeping across the fields carrying a force which can subjugate us, occupy us and haul people off to concentration camps.  Terrorists disrupt but they do not destroy free societies. 

We are all a little disoriented: We can understand a shoot out in a bank. We can even understand a street mugging turning into murder. We can wrap our minds around a gang rape in a park. These are deviant behaviors we have come to terms with. 

We are still trying to get accustomed to suicidal young people who want to take out as many people as they can,  because they feel oppressed and they want to go out in a blinding flash of "glory."  

But, next time,  let's just shrug and say, "Oh, THAT again," and stop interviewing experts and putting breathless news anchors on TV  with all their wide eyed solemnity, asking questions of government officials about what all this means, and about what could have been done to prevent it.

We know what it means by now.
We know nothing can be done to prevent the next one.
We just have to shake it off and move on,  and be glad it wasn't us this time.