On War # 321:
4GW Comes to Ft. Hood
William S. Lind
10 November 2009
Defense and the National Interest
http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/
Last week’s shootings at Ft. Hood, in which thirteen U. S. Soldiers were killed and 30 people wounded, appear to be a classic example of Fourth Generation war. The shooter, U. S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was a practicing Muslim. He sometimes wore traditional Islamic dress and carried a Koran. He reportedly cried “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire. Though American-born and a U.S. citizen (and army officer), Major Hasan appears to have transferred his primary loyalty away from the state to something else, Islam. For his new primary loyalty, he was willing to kill. That is what defines Fourth Generation war.
This incident should put an end to the misinterpretation of 4GW that defines it as “what Mao did.” Mao Tse-tung’s wars were not 4GW. They were fought within the framework of the state, for political control of a state. Mao had nothing to do with the “leaderless resistance” last week’s shootings represent.
Major Hasan’s motives transcended the political. According to the November 9 Washington Post, a few hours before he opened fire, Major Hasan said to a neighbor, “I’m going to do good work for God.”
The Establishment, which continues to pretend the state (or Globalist super-state) has a monopoly on primary loyalty, predictably proclaimed the shootings the actions of “a madman.” That is what old and passing orders always say about the first avatars of the coming order (or disorder). It’s how the old order whistles past the graveyard – its own graveyard.
The cultural Marxists, leaping to the defense of “diversity,” their favorite poison for Western societies, claim Major Hasan’s massacre of his fellow soldiers does not represent Islam. Sorry, but it represents Islam all too well.
Islam does not recognize any separation between church and state. States have no legitimacy in Islam; legitimacy adheres only to the Ummah, the community of all believers. The only legitimate law is Sharia. All Muslims are commanded to wage jihad against all non-Islamics. Loyalty to Islam must be the believer’s primary loyalty. Nightwatch for 5 November writes:
Two years ago, a devout Pakistani cabdriver told Nightwatch that if Allah called him or any devout Muslim to go on jihad and to kill his family and even the riders in his cab, he must do it immediately. He made that statement calmly as a matter of fact, while driving north on US 1.
This was not the statement of an insane man, but of an educated man with a degree in engineering who was making ends meet; a devoted family man and a good cab driver.
There are of course peaceful Islamics; peace be upon them. But peaceful Islamics are also lax Islamics.
The ongoing Islamic revival is converting more and more Muslims, especially young men, to its purer version of Islam. That is happening everywhere, including among Islamics in Europe and America.
As Islamic Puritanism spreads, violence will spread with it.
At the same time, it would be an error to think of 4GW threats within Western societies as confined to Islam.
The U.S. military has already seen soldiers kill other soldiers as part of gang-related activities. Gangs may be as important an alternate primary loyalty as religion.
As the state loses its legitimacy, the variety of new primary loyalties that arise to replace it will be limitless.
As this column has often warned, Fourth Generation war is not just something fought “over there.” It comes to a theater near you.
That includes places like Ft. Hood. Many 4GW entities know that the best way to deal with hostile state security forces, police as well as military, is to take them from within.
Last week also saw the killing of five British soldiers in Afghanistan by an Afghan policeman working with their unit.
Many police departments along the southern U.S. border are owned by the drug traffickers.
The Establishment will attempt to label the massacre at Ft. Hood an “isolated incident.” On the contrary, it is just a foretaste of many more such actions to come. How might states reverse that trend? Three things might help:
1.Stay out of Fourth Generation wars overseas. Intervening in areas of stateless disorder imports their disorder.
2.Be prepared to outlaw violent alternative primary loyalties, including some religions (which in the case of the U. S. would require Constitutional amendments).
To those who argue that religious tolerance must be unlimited, I ask, would we tolerate the re-establishment of the Aztec religion, with its demand for ceaseless human sacrifices, on American soil? Of course not.
3.Strengthen the legitimacy of the state, which in Western societies usually means reducing, not augmenting, the power and intrusiveness of the central government. Nothing undermines the legitimacy of a state more effectively than attempts to “re-make” a society according to some ideology’s demands, as is now happening in the West in the name of cultural Marxism, aka “multiculturalism.”
A legitimate government defends its society’s traditional culture, it does not assault that culture.