Director of National Intelligence James Clapper today claimed that out of about 180 Americans who traveled to Syria to join various Islamist factions, 40 have already returned to the United States.
The claim sounds scarier than it likely is, as Clapper conceded that the US intelligence community doesn’t know how many of those 40 returnees were actual fighters, and admitted that the number includes people who went to Syria as aid workers.
That’s been a long-standing issue for Western intelligence agencies, which have been tracking the flow of people back and forth from Syria, but have limited information on what happened inside Syria.
The returnee fear is a long-standing one, as the lack of intelligence on what they were doing inside Syria means that people who have formed close ties to international terror could be returning with plans for attacks. The US war against ISIS only increases the chances they’d be a target of choice for such fighters.
They are returning now, after what some triumphant campaign or something? I bet neither the Passport Control goons nor the T&A morons harassed these people one bit as they like doing with innocent Americans.
And of course, some of these people will be used (sacrificed) as pawns in the game regardless of why they were in Syria. Gotta have some DHS success stories, you know, especially with the "malcontents" in Congress threatening to shut down Homeland non-Security.
Did the Americans also express such concern when – in the 1920 and 30´s – many Americans travelled to Mexico and Central America to aid the revolutionary movements there? What people do not seem to understand is that there is nothing monolithic in a country´s social structure; if there ever was. When we hear Cameron and Hollande pontificate that the terrorists ´are not British´ or that they ´do not understand French values´ one wonders whether they speak out of ignorance or simply politics. Just as the political literature of the XIXth century fuelled the anticolonial movement of the XXth, the idealism which seems to be at the core of Western values (still) is what is fuelling this input. Idealism has no brand-its not necessarily patriotism-and can be directed to causes inimical to the national interest. In that sense, and under Liberal Democracy, the West has dug its own grave.