I’m taking a class about terrorism at my community college as part of the criminal justice curriculum. The instructor is the same one who has taught most of my CJ classes and was the school director of my basic law enforcement training program. He’s more or less retired from LE, including ten years as a homicide detective, and he has a lot of good stuff to pass along.
Today we went over the question of what is terrorism and how did it get started. The instructor noted that Al Qaeda tends to plan their parties for years in advance before hitting max-casualty targets where lots of innocent people are gathered. The student in front of me (black female FWIW) said something like “where is it they all go … Mecca … well we ought to bomb THAT!” I about fell on the floor laughing. “I like the way you think,” I said.
Then we were talking about homicide bombers, and the promise of 72 virgins in Paradise, and the recent trend of recruiting women to blow themselves up. The same student asked “What do the women get? … we don’t want virgins!”
My terrorism class was infinitely more serious. Most of the funnies were the blank looks other students gave me when I said things that they didn’t want to hear.
Especially when I said something about “shoot him in his fucking face.”
Yeah, mine too and I’m not even in LE. Maybe he accidently wound up in the other terrorism class? Seth, were the other guys all wearing funny dresses and named Mohammed?
When you’re on the line at a Larry Vickers course, you can talk about shooting bastards in the face because by in large you aren’t going to be surrounded by sheep.
In most other settings, (ESPECIALLY academic ones) it’s best to baaa-aaa-aaa like the rest of the heard in a post VT world. To a sheep, a former Marine who talks about doing what is necessary to stop particularly bad people from doing particularly bad things looks exactly like a Cho.
The Prof. may have been a liberal, but she gave me an A in the course and a letter of recommendation to Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.
When you’re on the line at a Larry Vickers course, you can talk about shooting bastards in the face because by in large you aren’t going to be surrounded by sheep.
In most other settings, (ESPECIALLY academic ones) it’s best to baaa-aaa-aaa like the rest of the heard in a post VT world.
I had a Prof. tell me one time that we shouldn’t be wasting our money at McDonalds when there are starving children in Africa. I told her “I think you need a little lesson in economics. When you spend money at McDonalds, they don’t take it out back and burn it. They use it to pay their workers and their suppliers. When you send it overseas, you take it out of the American economy.”
She stuttered on for another five minutes before putting in a video.
Then there was the time she brought in a guest speaker to talk about his efforts to save poor “undocumented migrants” from dying in the desert. This was shortly after two of his colleagues were arrested for driving a dying illegal to the hospital. I asked him how they were doing in jail.
I got an A in the class.
Then I told a (legal) Mexican friend of mine that if it was true that so many of her countrymen were dying while crossing the desert then we needed to do something. I suggested giant magnifying glasses all along the border.
I got an A+ in that one.
Yeah. Then I had a TA tell me that “some things you can’t talk about at school. Even if they are true.” Wow.
Perfect answer in my book: We do do something. We are putting up a big fence to keep them out of the desert unattended and try and arrest them before they get there. If they get put back in Mexico or in jail, they cannot die in the desert can they?
I know a guy who scoops up dehydrated illegals in Yuma. I asked how he felt about having to cart them off to the hospital so they could die in tha back of his car.
He told me that they shouldn’t have tried to cross the desert…
How don’t get how a discussion about “what is terrorism and how it got started” became his immediate response about what the MO on Al Queda is? Terrorism/insurgency/guerrilla warfare has been around for ages and goes hand and hand. There are many models which are studied. If Al Queda is his only reference to terrorism, drop the class, get your money back and study it on your own.
Ooops, I have generated a misunderstanding. The class is 75 minutes per session and there were other things in between origins of terrorism and AQ. I only picked out a couple of funny lines, at least they were funny to me. This is a required class of the criminal justice curriculum so I’d better stay, and anyway it cost only $140 and no textbook is necessary. The instructor is a very highly regarded LE trainer who’s been in that business for at least 14 years. It’s probably not on the level of what you would learn at say Langley or Smoke Bomb Hill, but it gets you to thinking.
Yesterday we went over the facts that terrorism is nothing new and AQ doesn’t have a corner on the market by any means. Due to more concentrated populations and improved transportation, communication, and weapons technology, terrorism is a more powerful tool now than back in the days when you had to bring your atomic bomb in on a mule cart. The instructor suggested some terrorist approaches, like dumping microbes in a water reservoir, or breaking into the veterinary school at NC State U and stealing hoof-and-mouth virus and destroying the animal agriculture of the United States. Then he pointed out that these are easier said than done. I thought later, never mind the vet school, NCSU has a nuclear reactor in the middle of campus, so maybe somebody might try to terroize that. I’m sure they’ve thought about it and the security is better than when I was an operator trainee for a few days 20 years ago. Hey, if they let ME in, they’ll let in anybody.
We have plenty of sheep, not least because over 80% of the students at our college are female (but on the 1 to 10 scale, most are 1s, and the 10s all have gangsta boyfriends already), but we have plenty of don’t-take-nothin-from-NObody rednecks too. The Geneva Convention has come up often, and two guys in the back, one of whom is an EMT, are always complaining about it and saying we ought to ignore it. “Yeah, Bin Laden has .30-caliber AKs and they make us use little .22s!” They may be obnoxious and ill-informed, but they are not sheep. Another guy is an OIF vet but so far hasn’t said much. Like in Kung Fu Panda, he who talks does not know, and he who knows does not talk.
Well my friend was the one who arrested his friends. The charges were dismissed after a year. Judge said they were following protocol according to the MOU between them and BP. But they really didn’t follow it b/c they were supposed to stop and flag BP upon knowing BP was behind them and not just kept on truckin’ along. The IA was thirsty and he definitely wasn’t dying and he did not require or ask for medical help.
Man, college musta changed a little since I went (30+ years ago). Back then, if you wanted an “A” you had to be good at parroting the liberal B.S. that came out of the instructors’ mouths (and it was so deep, you needed waders to keep above it!).
I was at a Haz-Mat seminar a few years ago and all the good classes were about terrorism. The instructor gave us the scenario “Your partner is on the ground wrestling with a subject and he yells to you: ‘He’s wearing a bomb vest!’. What would you do?” Well, 75% of the people in the room were firefighters and they had quite a dilemma going until I raised my hand and said “Shoot the terrorist in the head”.
I’m not badmouthing the fire service, but we do not have the luxury of this type of indecisiveness. An enemy of my country is an enemy of mine. Kill them all.
I have taken a “Terrorism” college course that was very in depth on the history, current organizations and future of terrorism. I highly recommend that anyone with the access and time takes a terrorism course.
My course was taught by a CIA interrogator, and needless to say, he had some rather interesting stories. I am sure that the most interesting stories were the ones he couldn’t tell us.
Educating yourself about the “enemy” is as an important part of preparation as is arming yourself. These guys are our enemies and they will be visiting our country again. Some of them are already there.
terrorism vs. crime well in the real world crime does terrorize !but the real term is’’ irregular warfare’'- i had it drilled at me ,how to break your enemy by turning your enemy against its self !
Irregular warfare encompasses terrorism, but not all IW is terrorism. Also, calling terrorism crime delegitimizes it. Terrorism should be played down, not up, because it is not much of a threat unless people make it so.
Terrorism/insurgency/guerrilla warfare has been around for ages and goes hand and hand. There are many models which are studied. If Al Queda is his only reference to terrorism, drop the class, get your money back and study it on your own.