A century ago when brave Canadian soldiers fought in Europe during WW1, then during subsequent traditional wars in WW2 and in Korea, the enemy was pretty clear. Our military fought an enemy on the other side of the ocean, who largely wore a certain distinguishable uniform, a helmet or hat of a specific shape, and were most often to be found across some known line or “over the hill”. They had guns, bayonets, grenades, landmines buried in fields and of course bombs that were dropped from airplanes – as did our soldiers. There was an accepted cause for the conflict of the day and an end in sight – if the enemy was destroyed or surrendered. That was then.
Then came the more modern-era wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, where generally our military and coalition forces didn’t always know if the local citizens they were protecting were working in concert with or supporting the enemy forces, and quite often – but not always, a large part of the enemy army was located in specific towns, cities and geographic locations, most often wearing various forms of civilian attire. Enemy attacks could come from over the hill, or from within the very community they were trying to bring safety and freedom to. Besides guns and missiles, local people and cars carried explosive devices, and IEDs were buried in the middle of main thoroughfares.
How the world has changed. Can we define war? Who is the enemy now? What do they look like? What weapons are they using? Where are they located? Why do they want to hurt us? Anyone that thinks they have concrete answers to all of these questions is living in a dream-world.
In 2015, Al Qaeda and ISIS-inspired attacks against civilians in the Western world – not the military, are occurring on this side of the ocean, right where Americans and Canadians work and live. The police have become the first line of defense to this aggression, not the military. The new enemy may be a born-in-Canada or U.S. young person, who we watched grow up in the house next door, or a fellow student or a colleague that we share coffee with every morning. They look like us, dress like us, were not recruited or conscripted in the traditional sense, but inspired through an unknown recruiter in a social media world.
The new enemy doesn’t write letters to loved ones while lying in a foxhole overseas and profess their desire to come home safely. They generally accept that they will die for the cause that they have bought into, killing innocent people, children and police officers – not soldiers, in the process.
They still often use guns, but not always. The weapon of the day might be a suicide vest, a pressure-cooker filled with explosives and nails, or a pipe bomb. The battlefield won’t be a muddy field surrounded with barbed-wire or an armed encampment, but might be soft-target like a movie theatre, restaurant, sporting event or a shopping mall. The end-game of this war is not known or understood, except to bring death, destruction and cause people to live their daily lives in fear.
Despite all of this anarchy and unknowns, we have to rely on our intelligence, security and law enforcement forces to detect and eliminate the enemy, and to mitigate the threat, as they continue to do very well in this country. If we “see something” we need to “say something” to them, as they can’t do it alone. North American agencies are joined at the hip and closely tied to their European and Australian counterparts in sharing intelligence information and lessons learned every minute of the day, but we need to do our share to help.
Most importantly, we must remember that although we have witnessed some awful tragedies occur, we are still more likely to be hurt in a car crash or struck by lightning than in a terrorist attack.
We have to maintain our resolve and live our lives to the fullest – not cease doing the very activities we enjoy in our lives. We mustn’t lay awake at night worrying what is next and where. If we do, the new enemy wins. We cannot and will not allow that to happen.
Chris Lewis served as Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police from 2010 until he retired in 2014. He can be seen regularly on CTV and CP24 giving his opinion as a public safety analyst.
