David Coleman Headley is a 49-year-old American citizen and a resident of Chicago. He is also, according to charges filed by prosecutors, responsible for conducting the casing of targets in Mumbai which were hit in terrorist attacks in November 2008. At the time of his arrest in October, Headley was in the process of planning an attack to take place in Copenhagen against the offices of a Danish newspaper which had published a cartoon depicting an image of the prophet Mohammed.

On Nov. 5, 2009, US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. Screaming in Arabic, “Allah Akbar” (God is Great), Hasan calmly and methodically shot his defenseless victims until he himself was shot and incapacitated by a civilian police officer. The available evidence suggests that Hasan reloaded frequently during this attack and ultimately fired upwards of one hundred rounds. Thirteen individuals were killed. Several dozen were wounded.

We have crossed a critical divide, and yet somehow we seem either unable or unwilling to acknowledge its strategic significance. While we are still focused on the conflict in Afghanistan and stopping weapons and operatives from abroad from entering our borders, the nature of the conflict has begun to morph around us. We must still be concerned that Al Qaeda will send teams to attack us for sure, but now we must also recognize that new cells and operatives are appearing all around us everyday, already here, and willing to act.

A few more of the many reported examples will suffice to make the point:

• In mid-November 2009, an American of Somali origin was arrested in the Netherlands and charged in connection with an investigation into the ongoing recruitment of Americans in Minneapolis to fight with the Al-Shabaab extremist group in Somalia.
• At least 20 young Somali-Americans have been recruited for such activity in the last few years, one of whom became the first know American suicide bomber in October 2008.
• In October 2009, Tarek Mehanna, a pharmacist in Massachusetts, was arrested and charged with conspiring to attack civilians at a shopping mall, American soldiers abroad and members of the executive branch of the federal government. Mehanna and his associates were attempting to acquire automatic weapons at the time he was arrested.
• In late September 2009, Michael C. Finton of Decatur, Illinois was arrested and charged with an attempt to blow up the federal building in Springfield. Finton had actually progressed to the point of driving a van he believed filled with explosives to the target site. Fortunately, law enforcement officers had penetrated the operation and succeeded in providing Finton with inert materials which posed no danger to the public.
• Najibullah Zazi, an airport shuttle driver in Colorado, was arrested in early September 2009 as he made preparations for attacks inside the continental United States. Zazi had already traveled abroad for training and, apparently, was in the process of mixing the explosives he would use in his planned operations.
• In late July 2009, authorities in North Carolina arrested a group of seven men who were arming themselves and preparing to carry out jihadist activities abroad and an attack on the US Marine Base in Quantico, Virginia. One of these men had been trained in camps overseas, the others had not. Some of them were of Islamic descent, others were converts.

None of the individuals mentioned above was sent into this country by Al Qaeda or any other organization to stage an attack. Some were born here. Some entered the country legally. Some came illegally and then applied for asylum. All lead relatively normal lives as members of vibrant local communities until they were radicalized and recruited to engage in jihadist activity.

Only then did they seek training and begin to search for weapons and explosives.

Some of these individuals ultimately established contact with organizations like Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab. Others did not and their actions appear to have been spontaneous and independent of any significant outside support. Even Major Hasan, while he may have had ideological encouragement from abroad, appears to have crafted his attack plans and carried them to fruition in the absence of any concrete connection to a larger known organization.

Firefighters combating wildfires have for years had to deal with the phenomenon of blazes so massive and fast moving that they have simply jumped firebreaks cleared in their path. We are now confronting the functional equivalent in the world of counterterrorism. This does not mean we can abandon our focus on operations abroad and efforts to penetrate known overseas networks. It does mean that we need to add to that a recognition that we now must contend with our very own homegrown Islamic terrorists, and that the fire is already here.