Scott Mann, is a former Lt. Col and Green Beret. He is the CEO of Mission America and author of the best-selling novel “Game Changers”. He spent 23 years in the Army Special Forces Career involved in Foreign Internal Defense, Counter-insurgency, and Stability Missions. He served in the Special Operations for over 18 years and has been a Green Beret for over 15 years in combat deployments in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is one of the only former Lt. Col’s that is actively still involved in the day-to-day transition of Green Berets from active duty into civilian life.
Brussels needs to be a wake up call for America as we get distracted by political antics here at home
Let’s not wait for Brussels to come to America!
The attack that killed 26 innocent civilians in Brussels Belgium is a stark reminder that ISIS and other Islamist violent extremist groups are very much on the march in free society.
The game has changed and these terror groups are not messing around.
Multiple explosions of this caliber with these kind of significant casualties indicate several things:
1- even before knowing many details, it is obvious this was a complex attack that required significant planning and support.
2-Generally complex attacks of this kind also indicate that there was an inside job. Said another way, this likely indicates internal support within Belgium to facilitate this kind of operation taking place. My professional opinion is that we will learn that there was inside support from operatives living in side Belgium. Complex attacks of this nature are just too difficult to pull off in an external fashion. Time will tell on this one.
-There is some speculation that this was an attack of retribution for the arrest of Salah Abdelsalam, who helped mastermind the Paris attacks.
-Other security analysts like KT McFarland think this is more of a traditional political statement. She cited on Fox news this morning all of the multiple political targets inside Belgium
As a career guerrilla warfare expert, who has fought and studied these groups for many years, I disagree… I believe this is about social control.
ISIS is a new breed of terror group who want to demonstrate their ability to conduct horrific violence at very local levels to achieve societal paralysis.
This paralysis cows community and citizen action and draws Western powers into an emotional response and deeper fight in Syria where we employ traditional forms of warfare that bogs down and feeds the I SI S prophecy and narrative that Islam is under attack by the west.
In other words, the attacks in Belgium, Paris, and the ones to come are much more than political statements… They are a bait and switch designed to draw us deeper into a much broader manufactured holy war.
We must not forget the prophetic motivation of ISIS to usher in the “end of days”. They believe this prophesy and they will conduct these horrific attacks across Western Europe and eventually the US in order to draw Western powers deeper into their trap.
Right now, everyone is in a reactionary mode. This is very typical of these types of attacks.
Everyone stops their life briefly to gasp and then shake your head sadly for a few minutes at a violent attack going across their news screen.
While we mourn the loss of innocence in Belgium, we must wake up here in America.
As Americans get drawn into the political antics of our 2016 election year, it would be well advised for us to remember that ISIS is very much on the march and their temporary silence in America, as we’ve just seen in Brussels, does not equal inactivity.
If we want to see what is coming our way in the United States regarding ISIS, we only need to look at events like this in Western Europe. The same open societal systems and borders that enabled extremists to conduct this horrific attack in Belgium and Paris also enabled to ISIS operatives to conduct the San Bernardino shootings which was the worst Islam asked terror shooting event in American history.
This violent reality is not going away.
Let’s remember that the San Bernardino shooters had multiple explosive devices in their apartment.
A responsible planning assumption by politicians and law-enforcement is that ISlS are actively preparing complex attacks of the Belgium caliber here in United States.
If we are going to protect our freedom and our children we must change how we fight ISIS and these other extremists abroad and at home. Here are three significant steps we should take:
1-we should get very serious about addressing the narrative of ISI S. Our politicians and policymakers don’t even talk how these monsters recruit children and draw them into their false utopia known as their caliphate and mobilize them for horrific acts of violence. We must compete with this narrative on the world stage.
2-we must defeat ISIS and Al Qaeda in their safe Havens in rough places like Iraq, Syria, rural Afghanistan, and even north Africa.. This requires much more than drone strikes and night raids. We must empower local citizens in these rough places that were under the oppression of ISIS to stand up on their own. This means getting our warriors out from behind fences and living and working in these areas – Lawrence of Arabia style.
Our current administration and Congress currently does not allow this.
3-we must address the watt vulnerabilities here in our homeland that will likely be exploited just as they have been in France, Belgium, and other places in Western Europe. These are realities we must deal with.
Scott Mann’s mission America is actively promoting a “contract to protect America”. This is a contract between the American people and our politicians to get serious about fighting ISIS.
If people are watching the Belgium attack and want to know what they can do at home to take a stand against ISIS and demand political action, they can go to contract to protectAmerica.org and make their voice heard.
Let’s not wait until Brussels comes to America.
LTC (Ret.) Scott Mann
