The term lone wolf is oxymoronic wolves organize in packs to hunt and to survive
... a more fitting descriptor is Canis a. syriacus, the jackal
Eric LaMont Gregory
If, we cannot free innocent school girls from enslavement, what is it that we stand for, actually?
In the realm of intelligence gathering andpolicing,the descriptive terms used are meant to provide investigators with actionable insights into the nature of crimes as well as individuals and groups who commit them.
The term lone wolf as currently bantered about by intelligence, security and police forces, serves neither purpose.
All species and subspecies of wolves are social animals inherently that live and hunt in families called packs, although adult wolves can and do survive alone, albeit rarely.And, although wolves usually hunt in packs, in certain seasons, the spring and summer, when there is plenty of prey available,wolves dohunt alone.
There are a number of wolf species, such as, the gray (grey) wolf (also known as the timber wolf), the red wolf, the arctic wolf, the Mexican wolf and the white wolf.
It is the nature of generalizations to be accompanied by at least one notable exception, and in the wolf species, the shy and secretive red wolf,as a rule,hunts alone.
However, I doubt that there is much to be gained by our intelligence and policing services using the term red wolf to describe more correctly events which they now erroneously attribute to the actions of lone wolves.
In contrast to another article on this site, entitled Insanity: http://www.theoxfordscientist.com/insanity.html, the use of the term lone wolf does not yet reside so firmly in the conventional wisdom of American culture, as to preclude our ability to fashion properterminology that does not involve running the maze of oxymoronic perplexing absurdity, when the goal of communicating ideas is to provide clarity.
The definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome, is so firmly placed in our culture that although scholars argue that that is not the definition of insanity, it describes the likely outcome of certain repeated actions with almost surgical precision.
And is therefore, a useful tool for conveying information that describes the likely outcomes and the behavior of those who repeat actions expecting a different outcome, a description that is readily observable, and therefore useful.
Again, the use of the term lone wolf to describe criminal actions which coalesce to jihadism by those who are not, for lack of a better phrase, card-carrying members of any of the organizations proscribedby one or another of our intelligence, policing or military agencies, adds nothing to our policing and intelligence efforts.
Should the ethologists and comparative psychologists, who people the intelligence and criminal behavioral science apparatus of the United States, find heuristic and pragmatic value in comparisons of animal and human behavior, then in this instance, Kingdom: Animalia; Phylum: Chordata; Class: Mammalia; Order: Carnivora; Suborder: Caniformia; Family: Canidae; Genus: Canis; Species: C. aureus; Binomial name Canis aureus, with specific reference to the Subspecies Canis a. aureus and Canis a. syriacus, will provide a more actionable description.
And thereby, reserve and preserve what we know of the behavior of wolf packs, to describe aberrant behaviors in our own soldiers who return from the battlefield and band together. And, most urgently, so that our descriptions are explicit enough to be able to distinguish the lone jihadist from the jihadist wolf packs that will come to our shores in waves, that are at our doorstep, and some of whom are already among us, undeniably.
This author tried to convince GW not to describe the attacks on New York and Washington DC as terrorism, but simply as crimes committed against the people of the United States. Therefore, the proper course of action was to interdict those who committed crimes in the United States.
There is no force of juridical or moral bearing that prevents the law enforcement agencies of the United States from pursuing individuals or groups that have committed crimes against the people of the United States, in the United States, no matter where they might seek to find refuge.
Like the term lone wolf, terrorism offers little in the way of precise definition.
Lacking precise definition as to what terrorism is, and who is and is not a terrorist, a myriad of agencies have come into existence, and since the sum of their investigatory abilities are geared to ease-drop on those who live in a communications technology Disneyland, circumstances which neither describe the leaders nor the vast majority of the followers of those who seek the ruination of the United States and world domination under a single faith regime.
These agencies, for the most part, without the ability to armchair ease-drop on Boko Haram and ISIS, have turned their attention to unconstitutional invasions of the privacy of our own people and those of our allies.
Our entire intelligence surveillance apparatus would have done more to preserve the American Republic by monitoring the emails of the Chief and officers of the Ferguson Police Department, who were under oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and are paid from the public purse, than by listening in to the phone calls and reading the private correspondences of Tea Party members and the few remaining Civil Rights activists.
The war on terror, as currently constituted, revealed itself as a hollow, non-meritorious-hiring-policy jobs program, when the people of the United States did not, pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty, and do whatever was necessary to free the hundreds of school girls enslaved by the groups these agencies are supposed to be protecting the people of the United States and the free world, from.
All moral authority to stand as the standard bearer, the last line of defense and, as the staunch protector of human rights, evaporated by our inaction to free hundreds of school girls.
If, We the People of the United States, cannot free innocent school girls from enslavement, what is it that we stand for, actually?