Mad Max

In this last in a sequence of six posts on Islamic terrorism, it's worth answering a fundamental question. Now what?

Sure, millions marched in Paris showing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. Sure, the main stream media gushed over the trending twitter support. Sure, Western leaders said a few of the right things, but not the most important things.

Daniel Henninger summarizes nicely:

What will happen is this: François Hollande, David Cameron and Angela Merkel will convene meetings at large mahogany tables with their ministers and secretaries, and each of them will say out loud that more must be done.

These senior officials will go back to their departments, and they will hold the same meeting with another set of officials. This process—meet, announce, commit—will be repeated until the thousands of occupants in each office in every hallway in all the world’s relevant agencies have heard that something must be done.

It won’t be enough.

No amount of meetings, speeches or white papers on the terrorist threat, no matter how sincere, will change the fact that all these governments will hand responsibility for the execution of any antiterror strategies to their bureaucracies.

And what about Barack Obama, a president who has been notably absent from any substantive discussion of Islamic terror. In fact, he never uses the words Islamic" and "terrorism" in the same sentence, nor do his spokespeople. But no worries, he plans to conduct a conference on "extremism"—no adjective, just "extremism."

In reality, western leaders will dither and things will get progressively worse. Emboldened by our collective weakness, groups like al Qaeda (you remember, the group Obama told us had been decimated) and ISIS will vie for supporters by conducting and publicizing mass murder, rape and mayhem. The Middle East is rapidly become the land of Mad Max, while Western leaders ring their hands and cluck their tongues.

The problem is that the gangs of Mad Max have decided to emigrate to the West, import their religion/ideology as they settle in, and ultimately bring mass murder, rape and mayhem to our streets. It's already happening in France. As we hold a conference on "extremism" (no adjective), the gangs of Mad Max smile.