Chattanooga Shooting

What should be obvious from this act of terror is that this administration has learning absolutely nothing since the very similar event at Fort Hood. Unarmed military personnel on their own turf are essentially targets and this administration, along with the others before them that condoned this policy (renewed in 2011) of denying personnel of their sidearms while on base. This is a deeply flawed policy based more on the fears of anti-gun advocates than in reality. Evidently we have learned nothing from the reality of Ft. Hood and the Navy Yard shootings.

As to the shooter-there was one big clue. He was fired from his job for failing a drug test. Currently our administration has taken draconian measures to "decriminalize" drug use. Just this week the president went to El Reno facility in Oklahoma to register another statement that we should not judge those who indulge in what is criminal behavior such as drug use. Drug use while on the job is a huge issue. There have been videos of union workers at auto plants toking at lunch-a very dangerous stunt considering the machinery they are using. There have been cases of bus drivers and train engineers indulging to the detriment of all on board. Like it or not, drug use is a bad thing when combined with high skill programs. The shooter was fired and that is justified. What is also a problem is that nobody seems to want to ask the shooter's family why they didn't show concern for his seven month stint in Jordan. Most people would be troubled that their son was dropping out of a career and heading to a region that is dangerous. The shooter's father was investigated and perhaps terror networks found this too dangerous for them to use him as an asset in place. But an electrical engineer working at a nuclear power facility could be someone placed to do significant harm on a larger regional basis.

At this point, if the shooter was meant to do something at the nuclear facility, his dismissal ended that possibility. His desperation to prove his worthiness to be part of this terrorist network may have led to what was really a rather haphazard albeit effective plan of shooting up recruiting centers where due to publicity he would have known the personnel were unarmed. He probably didn't consider collateral damage.

Let's revisit the drug use issue. There's been a great deal of confusion over what would compel upper class, educated men and women from here and abroad to risk everything for the sake of a cause that seems little more than a death cult. Back when the Silk Road was a major East-West trade route, assassins would attack trade groups exacting horrendous mayhem in the process. The word "assassin" comes from the same rootword as "hashish"-the attackers of trade trains would get high so that their cruelty and carnage was masked in a haze of smoke. I wonder how many of these various terrorist attackers have been given high grade, uncut drugs with the goal being to enthrall them physically via addiction while at the same time creating the kind of psychological atmosphere where a normal kid raised in a western home would think it makes sense to kill people at random.