The United States and Canada must move away from using the term "lone wolf" when describing one-person terror attacks, says Jonathan Gilliam, a former Navy SEAL and FBI agent.
"Let’s get away from the 'lone wolf.' Let's start using the term which I know is a mouthful — 'emboldened fundamentalist,'" Gilliam said Thursday on the "Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
"Because that's what these people are. They're the 'emboldened fundamentalists' of this ideology."
Gilliam, president of United States Continued Service, said Canada — in the wake of the Wednesday shooting in Ottawa — is preparing its citizens for more potential violence.
"You had a prime minister that took a bold stance and said we think this is terrorism. So what does that do? That prepares the citizenry of Canada psychologically for the fact that this could continue," he said.
But Canada needs to work on its terror response, Gilliam believes.
"You can clearly tell that their tactics are not practiced, that they didn't expect this to happen and in this modern day and age you just cannot expect anything to not happen," he said.
On Wednesday, retired US Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters described the attack as Canada's 9/11 and said it was a wakeup call to America's northern neighbor.
"I don’t think it’s their 9/11," Gilliam countered, "It's their 1979, because that's when our embassy was taken over and that was really the first gut punch that we got from this same group. It's that long ago, 1979. It was then followed in 1983 by Beirut and so on and so forth … Canada's never really faced any of this."
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