In Chattanooga today, a Marine general and a Navy admiral remembered the four Marines and one sailor killed by a Muslim gunman last week as "heroes." The FBI has 250 agents on the scene and others running down some 400 leads around the world. The shooter is being regarded as "a homegrown violent extremist, who acted on his own… with nobody assisting him on that day."
When a self-described white supremacist gunned down nine black people in a Charleston church, official national mourning began immediately. When a young Muslim man killed four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, it took the President five days to lower the flags on government buildings. Military supporters are angry, calling it evidence of estrangement between the armed services and a society that takes them for granted. Call it "terrorism" or "an act of war," they expect more such incidents to come. What's the likely impact on a rapidly changing South?