On June 12, Omar Mateen shot fifty people dead at a nightclub in Orlando. Some time before, he had called 911 and pledged his allegiance to ISIS, also stating that he would strap bombs to four people in the nightclub and have each of them stand in different corners. Thankfully, he was never able to do so, but he still managed to inflict a lot of pain. This event, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, took the whole country by surprise; however, some people may argue that the government should have seen it coming.
Omar Mateen was already on an FBI watchlist.
In 2014, when a man from Florida drove a truck filled with explosives into a restaurant in Syria, the FBI linked the man in question to Mateen. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that Mateen had made several comments in alignment with the rhetoric of many radical Islamist groups to his coworkers; however, despite the concerns regarding his opinions, there was not enough evidence to take action at the time.
On Monday, however, after the shooting occurred, the director of the FBI announced that Mateen had pledged allegiance to both Al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the past. Mateen linked himself to a total of three terrorist groups—how did a man like that not undergo further scrutiny? More broadly, how did radical Islam slip right under the nose of the FBI, and how can this be prevented?
ISIS has turned Omar Mateen into propaganda, referring to him as their “brother” and praising his actions. This seemingly individual act of terror holds ties to a much larger, and much more fearsome, group that the United States still does not know how to fight.
In April, Obama made plans to increase the number of Special Operations forces and Army helicopters in Syria and Iraq. Since that time, there has been a constant back-and-forth about whether or not the United States should continue providing aid to those fighting against ISIS in these two countries, if the U.S. should terminate all involvement, or if the U.S. should consider going to war against ISIS.
The Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter, is continuing to push for increased support in war-torn countries being controlled by ISIS and smaller radical Islamist groups. He is trying to accelerate the campaign to shut down these terrorist groups, and while his efforts have helped the situation in other countries such as Syria and Iraq, the ideas of these groups continue to spread across the globe.
Some of the people who fall victim to this rhetoric are simply ignorant and entirely uninformed—two months ago, after having a fight with her mother, a teenage girl from Austria ran away from home and tried to join ISIS. On the other hand, there are people like Omar Mateen, a man who was born and raised in the United States. He was well-educated and the type of person one would not expect to support terrorist groups, yet he ended up committing one of the worst crimes this country has ever seen.
It is complicated enough to engage ISIS in physical combat, but can the United States prevent their beliefs from spreading? In a study published on Thursday, physicist Neil Johnson at the University of Miami explains an algorithm developed alongside his colleagues that tracks posts with radical Islamic rhetoric in order to try and predict attacks.
Although the algorithm obviously cannot make predictions with 100% accuracy, it is a step forward in anticipating the moves of Islamic State sympathizers and identifying potential terrorist attacks. The researchers’ algorithm attempts to find online groups that contain certain keywords and certain key ideas that are linked to ISIS or other groups trying to create civil unrest. The researchers noted that there is typically a spike in the formation of small pro-ISIS groups just before attacks occur.
Identifying these supporters is only the first step, however. To prevent attacks like the one in Orlando from happening, action must be taken. Presidential candidate Donald Trump suggests the inviable and discriminatory option of preventing all Muslims from entering the United States, but Omar Mateen was a man from the U.S. whose extremist ideas were homegrown. Additionally, the anti-Muslim messages spread by Trump and his supporters has done nothing except catalyze increased hatred for the U.S. by radical Islamist groups.
While the United States puts boots on the ground in places overrun by ISIS and guns in the hands of everyone working against this terrorist group, the government must keep in mind that there is more to be done. This group’s messages have an appeal to certain individuals, and it is important for the FBI to do everything in its power to monitor these individuals and prevent such dangerous ideas from spreading to the United States, as well as other countries that want nothing to do with the radical actions these ideas condone.