"So, another Jihadi has murdered four Marines in Chattanooga. So what?" The Lessons of Chattanooga: Disobey Posted Death Zones and Understand That Jihadi Fourth Generation Warfare Means We Are ALL At War -- Everywhere, All the Time.

“At the operational level (of 4th Generation Warfare), all an opponent has to move is ideas. He can do so through a wide variety of methods, from email to snail mail to personal courier to messages embedded in classified advertisements. He will try to submerge his communications in the noise of the everyday activity that is an essential part of modern society. It will be extraordinarily difficult to detect the operational level activities of a 4GW opponent.” -- LTC Thomas X. Hammes The Sling and the Stone, Page 218.

So, another Jihadi has murdered four Marines in Chattanooga. So what? What about this WASN'T absolutely predictable and predicted? Arguments over whether he represented "international" or "home-grown, domestic" terror or even the characterization of him as a "lone wolf" (as if that represents some sort of solace), are utterly beside the point and irrelevant. I have written and spoken about 4GW many times before. The Jihadi version of it is a weaponized idea, indiscriminate and evil beyond measure. Comments on this blog and elsewhere that the US federal government is a greater threat to our lives and liberty than any Jihadi are also true, but irrelevant to the families of the dead Marines and everyone else for that matter. The Jihadis have determined that they are in a global war with us, all of us -- our families, our friends, the innocent, wherever we live and whatever we do. We cannot opt out of it because they will not let us.

"You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son... your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck!" -- Gregory Peck as Mallory in The Guns of Navarone.

A man may make many enemies in his life, some intentionally, some unintentionally. That he must confront all of them, regardless of their point of attack is obvious. Again, nothing happened in Chattanooga yesterday that wasn't perfectly predictable. And having been predicted, most of us yawned and went back to sleep. Which leads me to the central lesson of Chattanooga. Take a good look at the photo above. "Gun-free zones" are nothing but death zones for the innocent. As an American at war, whether you chose to enlist in that war, you're in it, up to your neck. You MUST disobey such posted death zone signs just as you wouldn't enter camp gates unarmed with that other big collectivist lie of history posted on them -- "Arbeit Macht Frei."

As I watched yesterday, the overwhelming emotion I felt was sadness. Not for the dead but for the fact that Tennesseans -- not just Americans but SOUTHERNERS, by God -- have become so gelded, so self-neutered as to react to the attack like a flock of frightened sheep. Where was the guy who ignored the victim disarmament zone signs, who could have produced a handgun and shot the Jihadi in the back as he attacked? Where was the armed citizen who takes responsibility for the protection of himself/herself and others? Nowhere in evidence. It is that silent passing of the America I grew up in that I mourn above all.