Fourth Generation Warfare Comes to America

“Baba Tim”, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer, recently penned an excellent op-ed prompted by the murders committed in Orlando by Islamic extremist Omar Mateen. Mateen, a 29-year-old American of Afghan descent, professed allegiance to ISIS while on the phone to Orlando PD 911 dispatchers and to police crisis negotiators. In his article Fourth Generation Warfare Comes to America: What Are You Going To Do About It? Babatim makes a compelling case that Mateen's actions were a jihadist Fourth Generation Warfare attack on the United States.

It's compelling, because it's true. The murders in Orlando were just the latest in a series of such attacks, and it won't be the last. Chances are it won't even be the worst.

Baba Tim discuss the reality of recent attacks, then makes some suggestions as to what you, the individual, can do to ready yourself for the one you find yourself in.

“I find myself in a unique position, given my background, training and experiences, to write about an appropriate response to the Icehole (the FRI name for ISIS) violence. I’m a retired Marine infantryman who taught at a professional firearms training academy for several years. I also spent over 8 years in Afghanistan; most of that time I was in the contested provinces and all of that time I lived outside the wire embedded inside the local community. I carried a sidearm (and often a rifle) daily and when in the south I was never without fragmentation grenades in both my vest pockets. I have spent decades studying the literature associated with gun fights and gun fighters. I met Dave Grossman before he published On Killing and used his unpublished manuscript when we remodeled the USMC Infantry Officer Course close combat package. I had the honor of meeting and listening to Col. Boyd before he passed. For those of you who do not recognize these names read on – they are the core of the Sheepdog phenomenon and Sheepdogs are about to step onto the historical stage and light the way for freedom loving peoples to follow.

That the target was a gay night club is irrelevant. Homosexuality and Islam have a strange relationship due to the many peculiar customs routine among unmarried young adult males that in the west would consider homosexual. That’s old news. My speculation is that the nature of the target aided the Icehole shooter by de-humanizing his targets through the interpretation of the targeted group contained in the Koran. He could have targeted a stripper bar or any kind of bar for the same reason.

This observation enrages the gay rights crowd who insist this attack was an attack on gays specifically and thus a hate crime first and a Jihadist crime second. I am not sure what difference it makes to view the attack this way; as far as I’m concern this was an attack on the foundations this country was founded on and thus an attack on all of us; not just gays. But I have family and friends who find this view reprehensible and I don’t know what to say about that except I love my family and friends and am trying to show them a way forward that is not predicated on fear.”

You can read about that way forward here on Free Range International.

What is Fourth Generation Warfare?

“Characteristics such as decentralization and initiative carry over from the Third to the Fourth Generation, but in other respects the Fourth Generation marks the most radical change since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.

Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict. We now find ourselves facing the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward in every direction. In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.

Nor is Fourth Generation warfare merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of “multiculturalism,” is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war – which is by far the most dangerous kind.”

William S. Lind, Understanding Fourth Generation War (Excerpt)

Learn more about Fourth Generation Warfare here at the Strategic Studies Institute or in this book by William S. Lind.

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