Denial, global warming and the slaughter in Paris

What will the White House say caused the terrorist massacre in Paris? Will it be lack of job opportunities for an at-risk population?

James S. Robbins 3:17 p.m. EST November 14, 2015, USA Today

What will the White House say caused the terrorist massacre in Paris? Will it be lack of job opportunities for an at-risk population? Will it be outrage over an offensive Youtube video? Or maybe we are starting to see the practical national security effects of global warming? Whatever the administration says was the cause, they will never blame radical Islam, and that is why we cannot win the war.

The Islamic State has claimed credit for the Paris attacks, calling them “the first of the storm.” Earlier on Friday, hours before a small band of allegedly ISIS-linked jihadists took over 150 innocent lives in Paris, President Obama downplayed the terror threat. “I don’t think [the Islamic State is] gaining strength,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “we have contained them… you don’t see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain.” This assessment betrayed a certain type of intelligence failure, the inability to understand the transnational aspect of the threat. ISIS is an adaptive unconventional enemy that has built a potent international network of highly motivated killers. We cannot simply draw a red line on a map and hope they stay inside it.

President Obama also said “we’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters,” referring to international jihadist recruits heading into Syria. But what about the flow of foreign fighters out of the region? It is significant that Syrian and Egyptian passports were found near the bodies of suicide bombers in Paris. Earlier this year ISIS threatened to send 500,000 refugees to Europe to sow chaos, and this year there have been over 700,000 asylum claims filed in Europe alone. It is unknown how many of these might be ISIS infiltrators, but recent experience has shown – whether in Paris, Madrid, London, Boston, or with the 9/11 attacks – that it only takes a small number of committed terrorists to wreak havoc.

(More here.)