Colorado Springs – America’s Continuing Dilemma with the “T Word”

On Black Friday, America watched as another active shooter incident unfolded, this time in Colorado Springs at a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Whether the facility and its patrons and staff were the intended targets remains unknown, though the man charged with the attack, Robert Lewis Dear, was reported to have mentioned something about “baby parts” during his arrest.

However, one issue that should not be a point of debate is what to call this attack. Innocent civilians and a police officer were killed by a violent extremist. That is terrorism.

As I wrote after Dylan Roof attacked worshipers at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston (and then again concerning the targeting of police officers by extremists), as a nation, we continue to dismiss what is glaringly obvious. There are resilient, deadly extremist organizations and ideologies in this country, and they are American. Contrary to common assumption, one need not embrace violent jihad to be designated a terrorist.

Yet, thus far, Dear is being called everything except a terrorist.

The likely target of the Colorado Springs attack (Planned Parenthood) has been singled out before. There is a long history in this country of attacks against facilities dubbed “abortion clinics” (though that’s not an accurate term). As articulated by the National Abortion Foundation, there has been an organized campaign and escalating violence against abortion facilities since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The violent crimes that were committed in the aftermath read like a terrorist menu – murders, shootings, arsons, bombings, butyric acid attacks and even anthrax attacks.

The most disturbing of all of these attacks occurred on September 11, 2006. Yes, the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Yet, despite our attention to the threat of an attack on this important date, a car bomb attack by David McMenemy on the Edgerton Women’s Health Center in Davenport, Iowa (which despite McMenemy’s pre-attack surveillance, neither performed abortions nor made referrals to abortion services) went largely unnoticed. No national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported the attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available.

Despite the increasing threat from non-jihadist groups, the recent attacks in Paris, Lebanon and Mali, in addition to the Boston Marathon bombings, generate an outsized focus on “ISIS-inspired” threats. ISIS has killed zero Americans on U.S. soil. Attacks inspired by American issue-oriented extremist ideologies (like anti-abortion) have been maiming and killing for decades.

The United States’ laser focus on ISIS and religiously motivated violence shoves other terrorist threats to the back of the American consciousness. So I say it again. Refusing to utter the “T word” when a non-jihadist attack occurs perpetuates the idea that terrorists can only be Muslim. And that leaves our country vulnerable to being blindsided by yet another homegrown violent extremist.

The time to pay attention has arrived.