"But what about the moderates?"

[xpastor]

That is refreshing to see, X-P.

I don't buy the notion that these "lone wolves" are all that alone. They have friends, they have acquaintances, they have family. Those people should be worried about what will happen to their loved one if they do go off on a personal jihad. These things rarely end well. "No man is an island," as John Donne said.

I think "lone wolf" is meant to imply primarily that these individuals acted on their own rather than being part of a cell with a co-ordinated plan. An example of the latter was the Toronto Eighteen who had grandiose plans to blow up several buildings including Parliament and to behead the prime minister; they were stopped in their tracks because one of them was in fact a mole, reporting to the Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS).

My general impression (borne out by the two most recent cases) is that these "lone wolves: do not in fact have friends. Both of the men who murdered the Canadian soldiers. Both of them had a history of drug abuse and criminal records.

They have family of course, but they don't always know what is going on and after the event they are too emotionally entangled to reach a balanced judgment.

For instance, the mother of the man who shot the soldier at the War Memorial had only recently seen him for the first time in five years. After his crime she said that she "hated" her son and had been crying all day for the young soldier he killed. Then a week later she said that her son's act had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with mental illness, a sentiment echoed in some editorials. Personally, I don't see why terrorism and mental illness must be an either-or rather than a both-and.