
I’m watching the news, just like most of America is, of the shootings in Chattanooga, TN, by an ISIS operative. I’m as appalled, but probably not for the reasons that most of America is. Here’s why I’m appalled….
1) I see people, including military personnel, calling the shooter a “coward.” This is a cultural cognitive bias that we HAVE to get past, both culturally and individually. Let’s look at this honestly…
The shooter in TN was not “cowardly.” What he was was smart. It was a criminal act, but only because he was a naturalized American citizen, which means he was a traitor, when he attacked American servicemen. This was an act of war, by an enemy combatant, against UNIFORMED MILITARY PERSONNEL. Did he ambush them? Sure. He utilized the METT-TC available to him, camouflaged himself in the urban environment, and killed UNIFORMED MILITARY PERSONNEL.
This is a man representative of a culture stretching back centuries; a culture that still remembers when the Caliphate ruled from India to the Iberian peninsula. These aren’t “goat-f_cking, towel-head, camel jockeys.” We like to browbeat them as “barbarians,” but both etymologically and anthropologically, they are not barbarians. They’re simply a culture with a different value system than ours.
They are our enemies, culturally, and we need to recognize that, but for a people who like to quote Sun Tzu, we seem to spend an awful lot of time trying to forget this maxim, ““If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
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