JOHN SCHINDLER: There is no intelligence or law enforcement fix to the threat Europe faces from global jihad.
Whether ISIS is really behind the Paris atrocity, as appears likely, will take time to determine with precision. It’s possible the operation was actually the work of one of the Al-Qa’ida franchises (for a good analysis of culpability I recommend this). Regardless, recent comments by President Obama that his highly diffident war against ISIS is going well, and the Islamic State has been “contained,” now seem woefully wrong.
Based on recent jihadist attacks in France, it’s also likely that the murderers were a mix of self-starters and trained killers. The standard questions that follow every attack—Were the perpetrators Europeans or foreigners? Were they members of any known terrorist group?—are less germane than the issue of whether this operation was under the control of ISIS, or anybody. In an era when thousands of Europeans have travelled to the Middle East to wage jihad, terrorist experience is not in short supply. . . .
As I explained back in January, after the last outrage in Paris, although France has very competent security services, among the best in Europe at countering terrorism, the number of potential jihadists is now so vast that no intelligence agency can reliably track and deter them all. Time and again, suspects on watch-lists go missing. In real life, unlike the movies, intelligence is never perfect.
Unless Paris is willing to contemplate harsher measures, such as the internment of potential jihadists, known Islamist radicals, we should expect more attacks. There is democratic precedent for this. In October 1970, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, a liberal icon, declared martial law, deployed the army in the streets, and rounded up nearly 500 extremists, thereby crushing the nascent terror threat in Quebec. Bleeding hearts objected but Trudeau’s famous response, “go on and bleed,” was telling – and he won.
If Hollande has the gumption to do something similar, France can still turn the tide against the jihadists and save many lives. “We know who they are, we usually know where they are,” explained a French counterterrorism official, an old friend, to me in the hours after the Paris attacks: “But will Paris let the gloves come off now? I don’t know.”
In truth, no experts in European jihadism were surprised by this latest atrocity. Given French and EU realities, it was only a matter of time. No experts will be surprised by the next jihadist attack in Europe either. Whether that happens is now up to the Europeans, with France in the lead. Although President Obama can help by doing something more meaningful than sending James Taylor to Paris to sing. Calling the enemy what it actually is would be a start. The fate of a continent is at stake.
I’m not expecting major progress for about 14 or 15 months. But I’d love to be surprised.