New Year's Attacks by Green Beret & Army Veteran: Does U.S. Militarism Abroad Fuel Violence at Home?

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We look at what we know about two deadly incidents that unfolded in the United States on New Year's Day: a truck attack in New Orleans in which a driver killed at least 14 people before being shot dead by police, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, part of an apparent suicide. The FBI has identified the New Orleans suspect as 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who had posted videos to social media before the attack pledging allegiance to the Islamic State militant group. In the Las Vegas case, the driver was 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado, an active-duty Army Green Beret, who is believed to have shot himself before the blast. Investigators say they have not found a link between the two incidents despite both men being connected to the military, but Army veteran and antiwar organizer Mike Prysner says "military service is now the number one predictor of becoming what is called a mass casualty offender, surpassing even mental health issues." Prysner says the U.S. military depends on social problems like alienation and inequality in order to gain new recruits, then "spits them back out" in often worse shape, with people exposed to violence sometimes turning to extremism. "We have these deep-rooted problems in our society that give rise to these incidents of mass violence. Service members and veterans … can actually be a part of changing society and getting to the root of those issues and moving society forward," he says, citing uniformed resistance to the Vietnam and Iraq wars as examples.

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