I have written repeatedly over the years on this blog that if our government fails to wage war on jihadis--even if our government defines it away as man-caused disasters or decides that a certain level of civilian casualties is worth the price to avoid fighting the killers--that eventually vigilantes in the West will form to fight back at the sub-national enemies just as our jihadi enemies fight us.
It is happening in Israel:
Jewish settlers in the West Bank made another attempt to set fire to a mosque (which had been attacked several times before.) This was considered a "price tag" attack. In this case, the attack was in retaliation of the Israeli government dismantling illegal structures in the West Bank. Price tag attacks are used now for all sorts of reasons. For decades, the settlers could be depended on to be passive after a Palestinian attack, letting the Israeli police and military look for the culprit. But now the settlers are increasingly launching "price tag" counterattacks. The price tag refers to what the Palestinians must suffer for every attack on Israelis, or for Israeli police interfering with settler activities. This is vigilante justice, and it does more damage to Palestinians than Israeli police efforts to catch and prosecute Palestinian attackers.
If we think the war is ugly now when our government wages war against non-state jihadis, imagine how ugly it will be when the war on terror is privatized, in part. Private warfare is already picking up speed, and civilians who either aren't satisfied with the level of our government's war or aren't satisfied with the objectives that we fight for could very well emerge if this war drags on long enough.
I worry that terrorists will strike one of our cities with a nuke, a dirty bomb, biological weapon, or a good amount of chemical weapons. But as I've asked before, what if the first city to be nuked in the Long War is Mecca? I've long said that our civil rights are at risk in a long war on defense as we ratchet up passive defenses at home. But there is another risk to fighting on and on without prospect of ultimate victory.
We could yet get a war between civilizations if we don't try to win this war by defeating the jihadis and the dysfunctional society that breeds them.
