OPINION:
This anniversary of a second day “that will live in infamy” feels different this year. America responded with her full strength after radical Islamic barbarians felled the twin towers, struck the Pentagon and downed Flight 93 on a field in Pennsylvania. Al Qaeda was put to flight, bereft of ideas and unable to replicate the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the space of a few years, they have recovered.
Like vicious animals that sense fright, the recently rebranded Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has been reinvigorated, accorded far too much breathing room by a U.S. administration racked with doubt and an inability to move quickly. President Obama pulled troops from Iraq. He traded a cadre of top Taliban commanders for a U.S. Army deserter. There’s no way to mask the stench of fear at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Whether by the name al Qaeda, Taliban, al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL, the Islamist goal is one and the same — the destruction of the West and the defining values of civilization. The only appropriate response is to crush those who would threaten those values. It’s not an occasion for dialogue, appeasement or negotiation.
Neither is it a time to substitute rebuke and admonition for shock and awe. The U.S. Central Command last month released a series of videos showing F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets launching 500-pound laser-guided bombs against pickup trucks in northern Iraq. Mr. Obama, the reluctant commander in chief, sends the message that terrorists will be safe so long as they’re not behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra flying the black flag of jihad.
On Tuesday, drones and fighter jets flew their 153rd sortie, successfully eliminating “five ISIL vehicles, and one ISIL transport vehicle.” Perhaps the military has made other, more effective strikes they’re not talking about, but Mr. Obama seems more concerned about keeping his Nobel Peace Prize than avenging crimes against America.
The United States is as vulnerable to attack today as it was 13 years ago, despite the systematic diminution of personal freedoms. The National Security Agency reads our emails, listens to our telephone calls and browses through the “selfies” stored in the iCloud. Has this unprecedented invasion of privacy made us safer? Clearly not.
America’s counterterrorism experts were looking the other way when a pair of disaffected Islamic brothers from Chechnya made their way to Massachusetts, apparently too busy patting down Grandma and bowing to the politically correct to take note of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Even a direct warning from the Russians was ignored, and the jihadist brothers were able to plant a pair of pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Three died, and hundreds were injured, and in the manhunt to seize the perpetrators, police in riot gear rode the streets as if martial law had been declared. A Watertown, Mass., neighborhood was shut down and cops with a take-no-prisoners attitude muscled their way to a door-to-door search. The overzealous search didn’t turn up the suspect until a resident heard a commotion in his backyard and summoned the authorities.
Such overreach has become the norm in post-9/11 America, where the Defense Department has delivered 12,000 bayonets to small-town police departments. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky grilled Undersecretary of Defense Alan F. Estevez on Tuesday about why someone thought cops need the sort of weapons that last saw use at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the island battles of World War II.
“Senator, bayonets are available under the program,” Mr. Estevez said. “I can’t answer what a local police force would need a bayonet for.”
The senator rightly pointed out that there’s no reason for a cop to fix a bayonet. The military equipment, the surveillance and the lack of due process are the casualties of 9/11 and the misplaced priorities that followed. The only good news is that the excessive force recently on display in Ferguson, Mo., has made Americans aware that there’s too much “shock and awe” at home and not enough in the Middle East. Mr. Obama must learn the true lesson of 9/11, that peace and decent order are only won through strength. That’s the only way to keep the barbarians on the run.
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