It was literally gut wrenching, even to those of us hundreds of miles from Orlando. The horror of what happened to our fellow Americans sickened us to the core and left us numb and depressed.
Few of us can now just turn away and go back about our business. We want to do something, or have our government do something to address the senseless horror. But what?
We need to begin by understanding the nature of the problem. All six of the Islamist terrorist attacks in the U.S. in the last eight years were essentially self-activated individuals, or groups limited to two family members.
These attacks have not been conspiracies perpetrated by cells. They have not been conducted, as 9/11 was, by people slipped into the United States to attack us. Nor have these attacks been coordinated, as far as we know, in detail from abroad. People living in the U.S. have been motivated by online propaganda and have heeded the call to act, deciding on their own where, when and how.
It is next to impossible to know in advance who will become one of these “lone wolf” attackers, or to detect when they have switched into a terrorist about to take innocent lives.
As difficult as this type of attack is to detect in advance, such events are also very rare. Eight people living in the U.S. have engaged in violent Islamist terrorism in this country during the Obama administration. Eight. A few hundred have left the U.S. to join Islamist terrorist groups elsewhere. Fewer than 1,000 people are under active consideration by the FBI as possible Islamist terrorist threats, according to FBI Director James Comey’s Congressional testimony.
Even after the horror at Pulse, the fatalities in the U.S. from Islamist terrorism here have averaged fewer than 10 a year since 2008. Every one of those fatalities was a tragedy, and we should do all that we can to bring that number to zero. Statistics cannot properly convey the impact of the deaths. But the data may show us how to address the problem.
Homicides by guns in the U.S. are over 1,000 times more frequent than fatalities here from Islamist terrorism. By addressing that problem — the ease of obtaining guns and in particular assault weapons — we may also reduce the ability of terrorists to do large scale damage.
Two simple measures will improve security without infringing on anyone’s constitutional rights. First, ban gun ownership for anyone on the terrorism no-fly or watch lists. Combine that with an expedited review and appeal process.
Second, re-institute the assault weapons ban. The sky did not fall when we had such a ban in the 1990s. No one can demonstrate that the ban caused them real harm.
Then, we need to address the online propaganda which succeeds in turning people among us into crazed killers. To do that, we should take down the websites through cyber attacks, no matter where the servers sit. That will be only partially successful, so we must also beat ISIS in the propaganda war, by getting out a credible counter message stream from people who will have appeal to the target audience.
Islam does not condone or justify these acts of horror; it condemns them. Potential terrorists need to know that if Islam is right, terrorists will forever be tormented in hell. Efforts at countering the ISIS message have been successful in some countries, but a much more thorough program is needed.
Programs to counter violent extremism by addressing legitimate sources of frustration are also a key element of reducing the frequency of these attacks. Depending upon the community, such efforts could include job training, sports, anti-discrimination programs or structured dialogues.
We also need to roll back ISIS, liberating the cities it runs in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Doing that will take away some of the self-declared caliphate’s appeal to new recruits, making them seem like losers. The Obama administration has been very cautious in its efforts to de-construct ISIS.
Finally, there are things we should not do in reaction to Orlando. We should not give up our civil liberties to any degree, or give the FBI keys to our encryption. (ISIS will always be able to get encryption without the FBI backdoor in it.) We should not panic. We should come together and fight hate with love and smarts, but we should not panic or give in to stereotyping.
ISIS is using terrorist attacks to try to get us to fight a “war against Islam.” That is what they want. We must not give it to them.
Clarke, chairman of the Middle East Institute, is former White House counter-terrorism czar (1993-2001).
