![\"Lafayette-We-Are-Here\"](\"https:\/\/c6.staticflickr.com\/9\/8864\/27712584333_0017e36719_m.jpg\")
With regard to yesterday’s terror attack in Nice, I wish there was some strong,\u00a0effective “Lafayette, we are here” assistance we could offer\u00a0our long-time friends the French. But how can anyone\u00a0predict and prevent this kind of lone-wolf terrorism?<\/p>\n
It’s safe to say\u00a0we already\u00a0share terror network\u00a0intelligence with France\u00a0and other Western nations. Any such nation-to-nation intel sharing would be\u00a0highly classified, and for that reason if it has been successful in preventing\u00a0planned terror\u00a0attacks, we\u00a0won’t\u00a0hear about it for 40 or 50 years.<\/p>\n
Beyond sharing intel, though, what can we do? There’s no military response, not inside France. We\u00a0(and the French, and several other nations) are\u00a0already bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and sending special operations forces after\u00a0other terrorists in\u00a0the Middle East and Africa. What else can we do?<\/p>\n
I hesitate\u00a0to ask why we in\u00a0the USA aren’t\u00a0experiencing large-scale attacks like the ones in France. I\u00a0feel that would be asking for it. Some\u00a0of our own mass shootings have turned out to be lone wolf terrorist attacks, different only in scale from what the French are experiencing. Huge crowds gather on the streets of American cities all the time.* We’re as vulnerable as anyone else.<\/p>\n
Seriously, though, have\u00a0any American politicians publicly admitted\u00a0there’s not much we can do to prevent lone wolf terrorism? Sure, you can catch the stupid wannabes\u00a0before they get their stuff together, but what about the true lone wolves, the ones who keep their plans to themselves until the moment they strike? The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said this<\/a> to his countrymen yesterday:\u00a0\u201cThe times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.\u201d True enough, but I can’t imagine our leaders\u00a0admitting\u00a0such a thing to us.<\/p>\n What does living with terrorism suggest to you? To me, it conjures visions of a police state with martial law and curfews and prohibitions against mass assembly. That’s what\u00a0clamping down will inevitably lead to. Hmm … would I rather be clamped down on by\u00a0Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?<\/p>\n *Some day our\u00a0kids and grandkids will learn about the planned terror attacks the Obama administration successfully prevented. I’m sure there have been many, and I want to believe we’ve helped the French and others prevent a few as well. I hope Americans of\u00a0a few decades from now will\u00a0better appreciate President Obama than the ungrateful assholes who snipe at him now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seriously, though, have any American politicians publicly admitted there’s not much we can do to prevent lone wolf terrorism? Sure, you can catch the stupid wannabes before they get their stuff together, but what about the true lone wolves, the ones who keep their plans to themselves until the moment they strike?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,189,22,9],"tags":[2141,2142,2143,2140,1963],"class_list":["post-18991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-extremism","category-terrorism","category-war","tag-france","tag-lone-wolf","tag-martial-law","tag-nice","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18991"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19000,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991\/revisions\/19000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}