Fort Hood

The Perspectives on Terrorism site
(http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=120&Itemid=1)
has a new article, with some relevance to the tragedy in Texas: Revisiting the Contagion Hypothesis: Terrorism, News Coverage, and Copycat Attacks, by Brigitte L Nacos.

Hwoever, the author seems a little confused -
much of what she says makes sense, but I disagree strongly with the view that: "The adoption of effective terrorist tactics, however, does not cause terrorism per se because those tactics are imitated or adapted by organizations that already exist and have embraced terrorism.". Nacos reinforces her point by quoting from Mark Sedgwick (‘Inspiration and the Origins of Global Waves of Terrorism.’) - "A particular terrorist technique is only of interest to a group that has already made the decision to adopt a terrorist strategy; a technique cannot on its own cause a resort to terrorism.".

Well.. whilst that may generally be true, it seems to me that at the lower end of the attack-complexity scale, it is fundamentally flawed. The Fort Hood attack seems capable of lowering the threshold for political violence of disaffected - but thus far unengaged - Muslims in America. By demonstrating what can be achieved with only two handguns, and by his personal example, Hasan will have had a considerable - and unpredictable - impact on Muslims in the US and, of course, further afield. I will be extremely surprised if we do not see further 'lone wolf' (or small group) attacks inspired by Major Hasan's action within, say, the next 6 months.

At the upper end of complexity - IED's, missiles, etc. - then someone who is already a terrorist would naturally find it easier to learn from others' operations and adopt their techniques, and, equally, an uninvolved person would find the 'barriers to market-entry' fairly difficult to overcome. However, there will always be individuals who, due to their history (police, military, civilian explosives user ?) would find it much easier to cross that threshold. For that reason, I believe Nacos' premise, whilst broadly reflecting the majority of cases, is certainly not a definitive description of every situation.

And it seems rather odd that Nacos spends much of her time presenting evidence of previously non-violent parties being inspired to violence (e.g. Timothy McVeigh,Seung-hui Cho), and then, somehow, reaching the above contradictory conclusion.

Proof of her muddled analysis will , alas, come with the next "Fort Hood"-style attack.

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