Here is the rewritten content:
The military ties of the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day highlight the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those that seek mass casualties.
In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 others dead and injured dozens more. It’s being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people.
On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake-up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”
Radicalization is rising amongst veterans and active military members. Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country. However, an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active-duty service members was on the rise, and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017.
The AP also found multiple issues with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyses, and ignored evidence of the problem.
Since 2017, both veterans and active-duty service members radicalized at a faster rate than people without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Less than one per cent of the adult population is currently serving in the U.S. military, but active-duty military members make up a disproportionate 3.2 per cent of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.
While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gives extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.
Story continues below advertisement
This held true whether or not the plots were carried out. The jihadist ideology of the Islamic State group apparently connected to the New Orleans attack would make it an outlier in the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds. Only around nine per cent of such extremists with military backgrounds subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80 per cent identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left or other motivations.
Still, there have been a number of significant attacks motivated by the Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had U.S. military backgrounds.
In 2017, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who’d served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after radicalizing via jihadist message boards and vowing support for the Islamic State.
More than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection – 18 per cent of those arrested for the attack as of late last year, according to START.
The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals. The AP’s analysis found that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than plots that didn’t include someone with a military background.
Conclusion:
The increasing role of individuals with military experience in ideologically driven attacks highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach to addressing extremism in the military. The Pentagon must work to understand the root causes of extremism and ensure that such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities.
FAQs:
Q: What was the motivation behind the New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks?
A: The attacks were motivated by ideological extremism, with the New Orleans attack being linked to the Islamic State group and the Las Vegas attack being carried out by an individual with a history of radicalization.
Q: How common are extremist attacks in the military?
A: According to the AP’s analysis, more than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Q: What is being done to address extremism in the military?
A: The Pentagon has said it is committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring that such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities. However, the AP has found that there are still significant challenges in addressing extremism in the military, including the lack of a force-wide system to track it and the presence of old data, misleading analyses, and ignored evidence of the problem.
About The Author
