WarSclerotic

Why Do Western Leaders Bother to Condemn Terror Attacks? PJ Media, Robert Spencer, January 3, 2016

(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

And it isn’t just a matter of its time running out, either: this same charade has played out after every jihad massacre. The condemnations and declarations of resolve are plentiful, but real action against jihad terror, much less even a realistic acknowledgment of its motivating ideology, has been much harder to find. In this case, as in all others, the condemnations will not be backed up by any action whatsoever. They don’t mean a thing except as an exercise in bizarrely gratuitous virtue-signaling.

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An Islamic jihadist screaming “Allahu akbar” opened fire in a crowded Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Eve, murdering 39 people and injuring 69 others. And immediately the pro forma condemnations began pouring in, serving only to highlight the futility and wrongheadedness of the West’s response to the global jihad.

Barack Obama called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tell him that he “strongly condemned” the massacre. National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Ned Price said that the United States condemned the “horrific terrorist attack” in the strongest terms. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that the U.S. government “strongly condemns the terrorist attack.”

Obama and the United States government condemned the attack? How reassuring! Was it ever really in doubt where they would come down on this issue?

These condemnations from Western leaders are hollow and meaningless. Indeed, they constitute an admission of impotence unless they are backed up by action.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter appeared to be promising some kind of action as he declared that “this attack only redoubles our resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Turkish allies in condemning these attacks and relentlessly combating terrorism.”

But does the Obama administration, in its final two weeks, really have any intention of doing anything at all to pursue the Istanbul jihad murderer and bringing him to justice? Almost certainly not.

And it isn’t just a matter of its time running out, either: this same charade has played out after every jihad massacre. The condemnations and declarations of resolve are plentiful, but real action against jihad terror, much less even a realistic acknowledgment of its motivating ideology, has been much harder to find. In this case, as in all others, the condemnations will not be backed up by any action whatsoever. They don’t mean a thing except as an exercise in bizarrely gratuitous virtue-signaling.

The impotence and denial is not limited to the Obama administration. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted: “Tragic start to 2017 in.”

But the Istanbul massacre was not a tragedy. A tidal wave is a tragedy. This is a war.

To pretend that jihad terror is a tragedy is to imply that it is inevitable, an act of God, a part of life, just something that one has to tolerate the way the victims of a devastating hurricane simply have to get on with their lives.

Jihad terror is nothing like that at all. It is preventable. It can be stopped.

But it can only be stopped if authorities make the hard choices to implement measures that people such as Jens Stoltenberg wouldn’t dare even contemplate: a moratorium on Muslim immigration; the deportation of criminal aliens; the requiring of mosques to teach against the al-Qaeda/ISIS understanding of Islam, and more. Since the current mainstream authorities would rather be caught dead than implement politically incorrect measures, these “tragedies” will continue to become more common.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini vowed: “We continue to work to prevent these tragedies.”

No, they don’t. EU immigration policies are actually evidence of them working to make attacks more common.

All of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. Is it racism and xenophobia to recall that in February 2015, the Islamic State boasted that it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees? Or that the Lebanese education minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country?

And 80% of migrants who have come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all. Why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and now into the U.S. as well?

An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September 2015, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose:

“It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.”

These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate. “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going intent on sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said: “Just wait.”

On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.

Mogherini is one of the people most responsible for this situation. It is her tragedy — and that of her friends and colleagues.

And there will, thanks to those same people, be plenty more of them. Their condemnations won’t change a thing, and only highlight the absolute failure of their response to the global jihad threat.