Jihad Comes to Europe: U.S. Military Told Not to Wear Uniform off Base

US Marines in Stuttgart, Germany. Pic: Flickr/Department of Defense

Sky News U.S. is reporting that military personnel stationed in Europe have been ordered should not wear uniforms when they are off base. The European Command did not advise of a specific threat when issuing the order to its 70,000 service-members that are based in Europe. Personnel have also been advised to be careful when using social media, ensuring that their privacy settings do not reveal their whereabouts.

The order comes within hours of the British police getting a similar order based on information from MI5 regarding a specific threat to police officers. Officers have been told not to travel to and from work in their uniforms after MI5 warned that there is specific information that home-grown jihadists intend to target a police officer in a similar attack to the muder of Lee Rigby.

A short time after this photograph was taken Lee was lying in the middle of the road, his head almost severed from his body. His attackers drove a car into him from behind knocking him unconscious. They got out of the car, dragged him into the middle of the road and set about him with knives and a meat clever.

Prosecutor Richard Whittam QC said:

“Both men then dragged his body into the middle of the road. They wanted members of the public to see the consequence of what can only be described as their barbarous acts.

They had committed, you may think, a cowardly and callous murder by deliberately attacking an unarmed man in plain clothes from behind, using a vehicle as a weapon, and then they murdered him and mutilated his body with that meat cleaver and knives.”

“Mr Adebolajo made a serious and almost successful attempt to decapitate Fusilier Rigby” (source)

The attack on Lee Rigby was barbaric but lacked sophistication. Using just the weapons to hand they ended this young mans life.

A soldier is run over and killed in Montreal.

Nathan Cirillo shot in Ottawa

A worker beheaded at Vaughn Foods Oklahoma

Three dual-citizen American-Israeli, and a British-Israeli killed with axes and knives in Jerusalem.

Increasingly those hellbent on the destruction of those that disagree with their religious affiliation or politics, are driving cars into crowds and using whatever they have to hand to kill and maim ‘the opposition’.

This unsophisticated but very effective strategy is effective on more than one level. Aside from killing the unfortunate victim they psychological effects of these attacks on home soil go far beyond the distress caused to the victims family. These attacks bring the fight not just to our home soil but to the neighbourhoods they occur in.

I spoke to a British soldier who had lost his leg in Afghanistan. A 19 year old whose entire life had changed literally in the blink of an eye. He said that the West can do whatever it likes, but you can never defeat an enemy who not only has no fear of death, but positively embraces it. Their mindset is so totally different from our soldiers who are brave beyond measure but who chose life over death.

One has to ask how long it will be before the civilian populations of the UK and the USA are once again legitimate targets as we were in New York in 2001 and London in 2005? The fear is this time that it will be the home-grown, under the radar attacks that make the headlines. The initial death tolls may not be anywhere near as high, but the affect on the psyche of the nation wondering where and when the next attack will come will undoubtedly have an effect.

Take Care

Liz