The terror strike in Belgium, following strikes in Paris last year and the ongoing problems with migrant-related crimes from uncontrolled Moslem immigration, is changing the war on terror by creating a new front:
Simply put, Europe has imported a major threat into its countries, one that did not exist a couple generations ago. It can be endlessly debated why this problem has grown so serious so quickly—for instance, how much is due to Europe’s failures at assimilation of immigrants versus the innate aggression of some of those immigrants (and their children)?—but that the threat is large and growing can no longer be denied by the sentient. ...
Europe is now at war again. The threat today is less terrorism than a low-grade insurgency, a guerrilla war of sorts, that hangs over much of the continent as thousands of jihadists, made proficient killers by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, return home with visions of killing “infidels,” their former neighbors. There will be no parley or negotiation with such mass murderers. Parsing the death-cult ideology that drives ISIS fighters, with the hope of making it less noxious, makes as much sense as trying to divine the finer political points of the Manson family.
The war on terror, if this assessment about what Europe has in store for it, has one very striking similarity to the Cold War--Europe will play a significant role in fighting the war on terror now that the war has come to Europe.
In the Cold War, the Soviet threat to NATO tended to mask the decline in power of European states that had been exhausted and broken by two world wars that ended their global dominance.
Once global powers or strong regional powers with global impact or potential, these European states only had major roles in the global Cold War because Europe was the focal point of the global struggle and Europe simply needed to defend itself to be a major player in the global struggle that we waged against the Soviet Union.
Now, long unwilling to make a major effort to fight jihadis overseas, European countries will find that they have little choice but to join the war against jihadis because so many jihadis are in Europe with a base of support for recruits that the Europeans imported.
Not that all or even a majority of Moslems in Europe are pro-jihadi. But you only need a minority with the will to kill in order to bully a lot more into passively looking the other way, at least.
Maybe there was something in the air, but back in the fall, I noted that European efforts to breed docility would falter as they realize that external threats are what matters--not crushing European threats to peace.
And I wondered how soon Europe would have no choice but to fight the war on terror if that external threat they were importing became active.
Sadly, Europeans have been unable to distinguish between immigrants who want to become part of European society (which is good, and strengthens European society) and invaders who want to become the European society (which is bad, and suicidal).
So the global war on terror has a European front. And Europe must fight on this front because they have nowhere else to go. This could get very ugly and look far more like a clash of civilizations than the type of war on terror we have waged that relies on helping friendly Moslems in Moslem-majority states to fight jihadis there.
Oh, and as I asked earlier, if Moslems in Europe riot and edge into revolt, what will a nuclear-armed Iran have to say about European counter-measures?
Nearly fifteen years after 9/11 in America, we really are all Americans, now.
UPDATE: But do the Europeans know it?
And is America still the America of 9/11 that is willing lead a fight against jihadis?
UPDATE: European elites are certainly not all American, now. They remain supra-Europeans who still think that Europe's main security problem is posed by European states warring with each other--pushed to fight by those bloody, ignorant peasants, of course--and that the EU is the solution.
