Lone wolf terrorist attacks, such as the stabbing of a police officer at the Flint, Mich., airport Wednesday, are growing and are far more difficult to stop than large-scale incidents, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Thursday.
"The messages coming out of Raqqa, Syria, are not to come to Syria and join the fight, but attack in the back yard by any means necessary," McCaul told MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "That's why we've seen a spike in Europe and we saw this recent attack yesterday in the United States."
It is currently the Muslim holy season of Ramadan, continued McCaul, and for "jihadists, it's a season of martyrdom."
"We're seeing attacks by vehicle, by knife, by whatever means you can, so I think that's why you're seeing this happen so much," McCaul said. "In fact, the killings have tripled this Ramadan season compared to last year."
Not all the terrorism is Muslim-related pointed out Mitchell, as the shootings at last week's baseball practice in Alexandria was home-grown and carried out by an American.
McCaul was to host a bipartisan conference Thursday on Capitol Hill about the relationship between the United States, China, and North Korea.
"We decided to put together the first Capitol Hill national security conference in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion with the Senate as well to stress the fact that, when it comes to national security and foreign policy, our partisan politics should end at the water's edge," McCaul said.
"Terrorists don't check our party affiliation," he continued. "This should not be a bitter partisan issue. We need to unite, I think, in both chambers and in both parties to deal with the threats we see across the world, whether it be ISIS and the latest threats, whether it be North Korea, whether it be China."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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