Outcome Based Terrorism

By randomly trying to assassinate people as they went through their daily routines, Mohammed successfully changed the habits and lifestyle of the more than one million people that live between Baltimore and Richmond. 

It was the randomness of that sniper and its resulting fear that coerced and intimidated people into changing how they shopped, how they got their kids to school, how they refueled their autos.  He stopped the way folks would impulsively travel outside of their home or jobs to go eat, visit friends or participate in normal commerce.  No longer would office workers break for lunch and casually walk down the street to a local deli or diner.  No longer would people stop off on the way home to meet a friend at a local pub or bistro.  No more lingering at the corner convenience store after pumping gas and buying that morning coffee.  It became jogging into that grocery store or hiding between the car and the pump while filling that tank… and there was no longer any thought of going out on a date or to dinner with a spouse.   

Aside from the actual pain and heartache endured by the immediate families from the loss of loved ones or the crippling of the actual wounded victims, there was also a substantial macro-economic impact during those 21 days.  At a cost of tens of millions of dollars in commerce, hundreds of push-cart vendors, mom & pop diners and fast food joints stood empty during what normally would be busy lunch hours in that corridor from Baltimore to Richmond.  In the evening, restaurant traffic virtually came to a stand still during Muhammad’s reign of terror.  People only left their homes or office to do only what was absolutely necessary.   For those three long weeks, American citizens were “terrorized” as they reacted to the threat that Mohammed had created.

The purpose of “terrorism” is to do exactly what John Mohammad accomplished. Other than the attack on September 11th, at no other time in American history has a terrorist act imposed such dynamic change in the lifestyle of so many people in our nation.   Although the attack on September 11th still reins king of terrorist attacks, John Allen Muhammad with his $40 worth of ammo and an old innocuous Chevy Impala succeeded in bringing the entire mid-Atlantic region to a virtual standstill. 

Recall the political climate seven years ago.  During that long 18 month period between September 12, 2001 and March 19, 2003 (during Bush’s “rush to war”) tensions were extremely high while President Bush repeatedly cajoled, negotiated and ultimately ‘drew a line in the sand’ to demand that Saddam Hussein step down as president of Iraq.  

Consider the previous twelve years of having a “no-fly” zone imposed on the Iraqi dictator post Desert Storm.  Recall the countless diplomatic efforts of posturing and blustering to somehow coerce the Iraqi leader into complying with numerous U.N. sanctions.  Consider that we were in a post September 11 climate with Hussein publicly offering substantial cash rewards to families if they would send their children off to be homicide bombers.  After the second or third shootings by John Muhammad, it was not beyond the possibility that Hussein could have been covertly implementing a ‘first strike’ against our nation by using embedded sleeper cells or recruiting radical Islamic extremists that were either home-grown or imported.  

In October 2002, the random sniper attacks brought some defense analysts to think that it was quite possible that one or more sniper teams could be accomplishing exactly the type of attacks that John Muhammad was perpetrating, i.e. a terrorist war against the United States.

Unlike the jihadist actions of Major Hasan at Fort Hood, if the goal was to terrorize and disrupt the lives of the individual citizens of the greater Washington DC metropolitan region, John Allen Muhammad had accomplished far more than anyone since Osama bin Laden and his band of 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers. 

Although Major Hasan’s acts will be construed by many as ‘terrorism’, the real post 9/11 imposition of terror over the greatest number of people was accomplished by the Beltway Sniper.  The sniper that would quietly disappear into the night after creating the fear and terror for hundreds of thousands of people living in that region.  

Major Hasan is guilty of being a murdering radical jihadist.  But if the terrorist acts John Muhammad imposed on the lives of everyday citizens had in any way been connected to a foreign state, his actions would have been construed as an act of war.