Time to Launch an All-Out War Against ISIS and the Global Jihad

The latest terrorist attack in France, which has taken at least 84 lives and injured scores of other people, has all the hallmarks of an ISIS operation. The jihadist group’s supporters sadistically celebrated the carnage left by a truck turned into a killing vehicle by its Tunisian-born driver. He barreled down the famous Promenade des Anglais in Nice and deliberately rammed into people whom had just enjoyed a fireworks display celebrating Bastille Day. Happiness turned to horror in an instant.

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Predictably, world leaders including President Obama, expressed their dismay and promised solidarity with the French people in their time of grief. The United Nations Security Council issued a press statement deploring the terrorist attack, which by now has become little more than boilerplate trotted out after virtually every major terrorist attack. Only the country, city and date of the attack are changed from statement to statement. The Security Council also began its meeting on July 15th with a moment of silence to honor the victims of the attack in Nice. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued his own condemnation of the attack, condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of France. He said he “hopes that all those responsible for this massacre will be rapidly identified and brought to justice” and stressed “the need to intensify regional and international efforts to combat terrorism and violent extremism.” In short, all we are hearing out of President Obama and the UN is the same old, same old. In response to the latest in a series of Islamic terrorist attacks on his country, French President François Hollande said, “All of France is under the threat of Islamic terrorism. Our vigilance must be relentless.” In truth, the whole civilized world is under attack. ISIS and other like-minded jihadists have declared war on the civilized world. From San Bernardino, Boston and Orlando to Istanbul, Moscow, Paris, Brussels, and now Nice, the jihadists have expanded the savagery they regularly inflict in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Asia. According to a tally compiled on TheReligionofPeace.com, there have been 1268 Islamic attacks in 50 countries so far during 2016, in which 11664 people were killed and 14087 injured.

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The vehicular massacre that occurred in Nice is in keeping with tactics the jihadists have urged their supporters to use for years. In 2014, for example, ISIS spokesman Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Adnani issued the following threat:

"Single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him. Kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

ISIS has made good on its threats. Rhetoric, UN resolutions and statements, and moments of silence may be feel-good measures, but they are wholly inadequate in dealing with the global jihadist war we are facing. The civilized world should stop treating the jihadist attacks as isolated acts of "violent extremism." President Obama’s incremental strategy to shrink the territory that ISIS controls under its so-called caliphate rule is inadequate. ISIS has expanded in other countries such as Libya. And by direction or through indoctrination and inspiration, its supporters have attacked soft targets at will on multiple continents. The civilized world must respond with overwhelming force. The strategic objective should be to completely wipe out the ISIS leadership, infrastructure and central ideological symbols at their source, delivering such a humiliating defeat that ISIS's propaganda mill will no longer be able to trumpet its successes to lure more recruits. To begin with, France should seriously consider exercising its right under the NATO treaty to invoke the collective defense provisions of Article 5. I asked France's UN Ambassador François Delattre whether France was contemplating such a move. He declined to answer. President Obama should lead from the front for once and urge President Hollande to invoke the NATO treaty’s collective defense provisions. However, Obama should not limit the collective operation against ISIS to NATO. Obama should lead the effort in organizing a summit meeting immediately on the model of the meeting held in 1943 among President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and General Secretary Stalin to plan the final strategy for the war against Nazi Germany and its allies. The purpose of this summit meeting would be to put together and agree to implement an all-out war strategy against ISIS. The summit should include the leaders of our NATO allies and key Middle East leaders, principally from Israel, Jordan and Egypt, which have been fighting their own battles against ISIS and other jihadists. Russia and China also have a shared interest in defeating this global Islamic terrorist scourge. Specific commitments to vastly improve intelligence sharing and to assign air and ground forces to the fight need to be reached.

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In addition, we need to re-institute targeted surveillance of radical mosques, their members and networks of collaborators. This would take a complete reversal of the Obama administration’s deeply entrenched politically correct policy of purging any critical references to Islamic ideology and beliefs, and to profiles of would-be jihadists, from intelligence and law enforcement resources and materials. A former senior official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed, for example, that he was ordered to purge records he had accumulated in a database that tied potential jihadists with various radical Islamic groups. “After leaving my 15-year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness – and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack,” charged the former DHS official, Philip Haney. Every effort must be made to restore this database and follow the trail of networked connections among radical Islamist groups and individuals wherever it may lead. At home and abroad, we are facing a determined enemy that will stop at nothing to kill as many innocent civilians as possible and destroy our way of life. It is time to give ISIS the final “end of days” battle with the infidels it so desperately wants and bring their own days to an end.

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