New Orleans Attack, Vegas Bombing Highlights Extreme Violence by Active Military, Vets – National

Military relations between The man who carried out the attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve And another one died there Explosion in Las Vegas on the same day Highlight the increasing role of people with military experience in ideologically motivated attacks, especially those that seek to cause large numbers of casualties.

In New Orleans, Shams al-Din Jabbar, a US Army veteran, was killed by police after an attack. Deadly rampage In a small truck, it left 14 dead and dozens injured.

It is being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by ISIS.

Las Vegas officials say Matthew Livelspergeran active member of the US Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance to the Trump International Hotel, wounding seven people.

Investigators said Friday that Livelsperger wrote that the explosion was intended to serve as a “wake-up call” and that the country was “incurably ill and heading toward collapse.”

Radicalization is on the rise among veterans and active military members

Military service members and veterans who have been radicalized make up a fraction of a percentage point of the millions upon millions who have served their country honorably.

but An Associated Press investigation was published last year It found that extremism among both veterans and active duty service members is on the rise, and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds have been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that the extremist plots they were involved in during that period resulted in death or injury. Nearly 100 people.

The AP also found multiple problems with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in its ranks, including that there is not yet a force-wide system to track it, and that Cornerstone report on the issue It contains outdated data, misleading analysis, and ignores evidence of the problem.

Since 2017, both veterans and active duty service members have been 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 percent of the adult population currently serves in the U.S. military, but active-duty military personnel make up a disproportionate 3.2 percent of extreme cases identified by START researchers between 2017 and 2022.

While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the involvement of active military personnel and veterans has given extremist plots a greater likelihood of mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by AP and START.

More than 480 people with a military background were accused of committing ideologically motivated extremist crimes from 2017 to 2023, including more than 230 people arrested in connection with terrorism. January 6, 2021 uprising – 18 percent of those arrested for the attack as of late last year, according to START.

The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, mostly veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure, or harm political, social, economic, or religious goals.

AP analysis It found that conspiracies involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties or weapons or firearms training than conspiracies that did not involve someone with a military background.

This is true whether the plots are carried out or not.

Clearly, ISIS’s jihadist ideology associated with the New Orleans attack would make it alien to the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds.

START researchers found that only about nine percent of these extremists with military backgrounds adhered to jihadist ideologies. More than 80% of participants belong to far-right, anti-government, or white supremacist ideologies, while the remainder are divided between far-left or other motives.

However, there were a number of important matters Attacks driven by ISIS and jihadist ideology The attackers had American military backgrounds.

In 2017, a US Army National Guard veteran who served in Iraq killed five people Mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida After being radicalized via jihadi message boards and pledging support for ISIS.

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In 2009, A psychiatrist and an Army officer were shot at Fort Hood, TexasIt led to the death of 13 people and the injury of dozens. The shooter had been in contact with a known Al-Qaeda operative before the shooting.

In light of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — which was led in part by veterans — law enforcement officials said the threat from domestic violent extremists was one of the most persistent and pressing terrorist threats to the United States.

The Pentagon said it was “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring that such behavior is addressed quickly and appropriately and reported to the appropriate authorities.”

The problem of violent extremism in the military crosses ideological lines, said Christopher Goldsmith, an Army veteran and executive director of the Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans on research and counter-extremism. However, he said that while the Biden administration tried to make efforts to address the matter, Republicans in Congress opposed it for political reasons.

“They put up, you know, every barrier they can say that the Biden administration is calling all veterans extremists,” Goldsmith said.

“And now we’re in a position where we’re four years behind where we could have been.”

During their long military careers, both Jabbar and Levelsberger served a stint at the US Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the largest military bases in the country. One official who spoke to the AP said there was no overlap in their duties at the base, now called Fort Liberty.

Goldsmith said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans and ISIS attack and ignore that most of the deadly attacks in the United States in modern history have come from the far right, especially if Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is confirmed.

Hegseth has risen Justify the Crusades in the Middle Ages who incited Christians against Muslims, criticized Pentagon efforts to address extremism in its ranks, and before Joe Biden’s inauguration in the weeks following the January 6 attack, was the same He was reported by a National Guard member as a potential “insider threat.”

With files from AP correspondent Tara Cobb in Washington, D.C

Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected]