World Gets Late Wake-Up Call to Radical Islam

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright January 9, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
                                    

               Watching from across the pond at the Paris massacre of satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo Jan. 6 by Islamic radicals, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged the world to confront Islamic terrorism.  Harper hadn’t woken up when Osama bin Laden leveled the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon Sept. 11.  Nor was Harper and a host of other world leaders worried Oct. 23, 1983 when Islamic radicals bombed U.S. marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 Americans, 58 French and others totaling 307.  Harper and his European friends turned the other cheek five years later when Libyan terrorists blew up Pan Am Flight 103 Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 passengers, crew and folks on the ground.   Europe looked the other way when Islamic terrorists struck Khobar Towers June 25, 1996, killing another 20 Americans, injuring scores more.

             Where were the Canadians when things started to heat up in 1998, when Bin Laden hit U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Aug. 7, 1998, killing 224?  World leader still weren’t convinced about the dangers of Islamic terrorism when Bin Laden struck the U.S.S. Cole Oct. 12, 200, killing 17 U.S. sailors.  Less than one year later Sept. 11, 2001, Bin Laden leveled the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing 2,996 innocent bystanders, sparking cheers in the Palestinian territories and around the Muslim world.  Bombings in Madrid’s Train station killing 191 March 11, 2004, then the London Tube July 7, 2005, killing 52 started to get Europe’s attention.  “We may not like this and wish it would go away, but it’s not going to go away, and the reality is we are going to have to confront it,” said Harper, finally getting the message about Islamic terrorism.

             Harper and other European leaders expressed horror at the senseless massacre of 12 employees of Charlie Hebdo by a group of Yemen-based al-Qaeda terrorists led by radicalized 30-something French brothers Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi.  Both screamed “Allahu Akbar” gunning down 12 employees avenging Charlie Hebdo’s satiric cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.  Harper lived through a day of national morning in Canada when a lone Islamic radical murdered a soldier Oct. 22, 2014 at the Naitonal War Memorial.  Harper and other European leaders are finally coming around that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with a pan-Islamic movement to take over the Middle East, and parts of Europe and Africa.  Whatever the al-Qaeda-affliate terror cell did in Paris, the aim of radical groups go way beyond garden-variety massacres that occurred at Charlie Hebdo.

             Serving as a magnate for misanthropes around the globe, groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] offer the disenfranchised a way of surviving and lashing out at the civilized world.  “The international jihadist movement has declared war.  They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act as the wish they’d think and act,” said Harper, getting the gravity of the situation.  Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi gets the dangers of radical Islam, bulldozing homes and business at the Gaza Rafah Border crossing to prevent infiltration by Hamas militants loyal to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.  If Egypt, a Muslim nation, sees fit to create a buffer zone against Islamic radicals, it speaks volumes about dangers to the rest of the world.  Calling the Parisian massacre “brutal acts of savagery,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the civilized world’s call to action.

             Calling the Jan. 6 attacks on Charlie Hebdo “cowardly evil attacks,” President Barack Obama offered France any help needed in their battle against radicals.  Promising to “hunt down and bring the perpetrators of this specific act to justice, and to roll up the networks that help to advance these kinds of plots,” Obama pledged to defend the rights of the free press.  Asking world leaders to band together to fight terror, Netanyahu hopes Europe sees what Israel has struggled with since forming a state in 1948.  World leaders have wanted in the past to separate radical Palestinians from the same groups that routinely commit crimes against humanity.  Now that Hamas has joined the Palestine Liberation Organization April 23, it reminds world leaders that any Palestinian peace deal can’t undermine Israel’s national security not the U.S. ability to successfully prosecute its war on terror.

             Better late than never, world leaders are finally coming to grips with the serious danger posed by radical Islam—not just to the United State and Israel.  “The attacks of radical Islam know no boundaries—these are international attacks and the response has to be international.  The terrorists want to destroy our freedoms and our civilization,” said Netanyahu, putting into perspective what’s at stake.  Speaking with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry at a White House press conference, Obama seconded Netanyahu’s call to action.  “The fact that this was an attack on journalists, attack on our free press, also underscores the degree to which these terrorists fear freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” said Obama refusing to give in to coercion and intimidation.  Like former President George W. Bush found out after Sept. 11, fighting global terror isn’t easy.

About the Author 

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.


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