It’s a sign of the times that news of a truck plowing into a crowded street makes us immediately suspect Islamist terrorism. But after Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando, Istanbul, Dhaka and Baghdad, what else should we think about a truck killing scores of revelers celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France? Jihad has become the default assumption of our age.
As we went to press late Thursday, French officials were reporting at least 77 dead and dozens more wounded. Witnesses described a truck veering into the seaside promenade where a crowd had gathered to watch the French national day’s fireworks. The driver was killed by police; Nice’s deputy mayor told French TV the vehicle “was full of weapons and grenades.”
The attack took place hours after French President Francois Hollande had announced that he would lift the state of emergency under which the government has operated since last November’s Paris massacre. The emergency, which gave the government expanded powers to carry out house raids and place suspects under house arrest without judicial oversight, was ferociously criticized by civil libertarians, many from Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party.
Now the question isn’t whether the emergency went too far, but whether it went far enough. Nobody doubts the importance of civil liberties, but surely one of them is the right to watch fireworks without fear of being bombed, shot or run over by terrorists.
The French may also wonder whether the country’s domestic intelligence and security forces have the manpower and resources to deal with the threat. Paris has an estimated 10,000 names on its terrorist watch-list, but fewer than 5,000 agents to monitor them. That ratio needs to be reversed.
An equal challenge will be to defeat Islamic State at its Mideast source. The Obama Administration insists that it is making steady progress in defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But the slow pace of the U.S. campaign has allowed ISIS to train tens of thousands of recruits, many with European passports, while extending its territorial reach from North Africa to South Asia. The threat has expanded its reach faster than it is being contained at its core.
For Europeans, one lesson in the Administration’s failure to defeat ISIS swiftly and decisively is that they cannot count on the U.S. as they once did to provide security in their neighborhood. Europe must do more for itself. But Americans watching the horror in Nice must also know that it could as easily have happened here. All the more reason to strengthen an Atlantic alliance to protect the freedoms of 1776 and 1789 against this 21st-century barbarism.http://www.wsj.com/articles/terror-in-france-again-1468548532
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