“A van crashed into pedestrians thronging a popular tourist area in the center of Barcelona, Spain, on Thursday,” read the opening sentence of a New York Times report yesterday, “killing at least 13 people in what the police were calling a terrorist attack.”
While local and national police and intelligence officers are still gathering information about the men suspected of plowing a vehicle into a crowd of tourists (as of this writing, two men have been arrested), and we have no idea of knowing whether this was an act of deadly, individual malice or part of a wider campaign planned and directed by the Islamic State, we do know that the violence in Barcelona is an extension of previous terrorist strikes in Europe over the last two years.
What airplanes and suicide bombers were to Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and 2000s, vehicles are to the Islamic State in the mid-2010s.
Indeed, using a car or a van as a weapon to kill innocent bystanders, party-goers, or pedestrians merely going about their lives has become so commonplace for ISIS militants that respected terrorism researchers such as the Rand Corporation’s Colin Clarke have written entire articles on the subject. The tactic is primitive, unsophisticated, and almost desperate, but intentionally killing people via vehicle can have the very same psychological effect on victims and witnesses as launching simultaneous, coordinated suicide bombings on the London transport system.
Depending on the rate of speed and the density of the crowd, one car, van, or truck can paralyze an entire nation for days, dominate a news cycle, and force governments at the local, regional, and national levels to spend more money on prevention, intelligence-gathering, counter-extremism, and police work.
To date, Americans have been fortunate to dodge the vehicular terrorism trend. If memory serves, the domestic terrorist attack in Charlottesville by a white supremacist was only the second time such a strike occurred on American soil — the first happening last November, when an Ohio State University student injured multiple people on campus.
Europeans haven’t been as lucky: French, German, and British law enforcement have dealt with this terrorist modus operandi for years. Whether it was in Nice during Bastille Day celebrations (86 people killed) in 2016, in Berlin during Christmas (12 people killed), in Stockholm on a spring day (5 killed), on the Westminster Bridge (5 killed), or on the London Bridge during business hours (8 killed), cars driving onto sidewalks are a cheap and easy way for terrorists and extremists to kill as many people as possible with very little hassle and very little skill.
Vehicular terrorism is appealing to groups such as ISIS because any psychotic loser with a low I.Q. can get behind the wheel and cause mayhem. You don’t need a degree in engineering; one doesn’t have to purchase chemicals, fertilizers, and nails and risk attracting the attention of law enforcement; and there isn’t a need to enroll in flight classes. You don’t even need to communicate with handlers, which deprives the intelligence services with an opportunity to interrupt a plot before it’s carried out.
Heck, you don’t even need to spend a dime for an attack like this to succeed; the perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin Christmas attack stole his vehicle.
Add all of this up, and one can only arrive at a clear conclusion: Low-grade, inexpensive, mindless terrorism with cars, knives, and guns will continue as long as cars, knives, and guns are available.
Therein lies the problem for the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, and every member of the West — stopping all acts of terrorism that are so improvisational, quick to carry out, and sporadic is downright impossible.
The counterterrorism and law enforcement communities are consistently on their heels, often in the unenviable position of responding only after the violence occurs. At times, early signs of an individual’s radicalization are missed by family members, friends, police officers, or members of the community. But in most cases, the person who chooses to kill innocent people with a car can evade law enforcement as long as no plans are shared widely with others.
The first instinct after any terrorist attack is to point fingers at the intelligence community for “failing to connect the dots,” overanalyze the situation until we are blue in the face, and assume that our government must be doing something wrong.
This is a human response to a tragic event. When the lives of innocents human beings are taken away prematurely, people instinctively demand answers about why the incident took place and which branch of the counterterrorism apparatus made a mistake. The thirst for revenge is palpable, with public pressure often forcing lawmakers and policymakers in Washington to enact policies, programs, and procedures that sound tough and strong from a public relations perspective but do very little to improve the country’s capacity to detect threats.
While the urge to do something is understandable at the most human level, history has reminded us over the last decade that implementing harsher, more-intrusive policies the day after a terrorist lashes out can turn into moral stains on our nation’s character.
Temporary precautions such as states of emergency, curfews, or color-coded warning systems can easily transform into permanent security measures. France, for example, has operated under a state of emergency for nearly two years—and even then, terrorists have managed to inflict casualties on French soil.
Overreacting to terrorism can be as dangerous and counterproductive as terrorism itself.
So as we continue to read about the victims, and as more information is broadcasted about the perpetrator(s), we should all keep in mind that however evil and vicious terrorism is, it cannot take down our societies, as long as we maintain our respect for individual liberty and the rule of law.
Sometimes the best thing to do once an attack happens is to be level-headed, even as we mourn those who were lost.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities. His opinions are his own.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
