Apparently unrepentant
December 26, 2003
Now, the Israeli news service Haaretz is reporting that one of the gunmen has been arrested in Belgium and accused of robberies totaling more than $250,000. It is well known that terrorist cells use robbery as a means of financing their illicit activities. This particular robber is reported to be a member of the member of the Tanzim militia, involved in past incidents of shooting at Israeli cars and the murder of Israeli citizens. Many of the gunmen had been deported to Ireland, but Khalil Mohammed Abdullah al-Nawara had been deported to Belgium.
It appears that — in addition to storming a church— he has no problem with biting the hand that feeds him, because the government of Belgium had provided him with financial assistance and housing. (Please, don’t even try to explain to me why any country would do that.) According to the Haaretz report, al-Nawara was initially under guard by Belgian security forces, but this was later lifted after he was deemed not to be a threat to public security.
The robberies against Belgian post offices involved the use of explosives.
Believing that self-avowed terrorists are not a threat to public security is not, unfortunately, the exclusive blunder of neo-socialist European countries. When our US Marines were deployed to Lebanon in 1983, there was an American policy in place that was based on a pretense that terrorists were somehow not dangerous. That policy allowed the car bomber to get close enough to destroy the building where 241 Marines had been living. Many of them were killed while off-duty and resting.
I am directly aware of that policy because, during my security-planning duties in the Air Force, I read an analysis report about the bombing incident. At that time, the report was classified Secret. My understanding is that it was declassified about ten years later. In the past twenty years, I have seen only one fleeting reference to that report in any news article. The report revealed the policy that the Marine sentries were not allowed to have a magazine inserted in their rifles! The time it took for the sentry to take the magazine out of the pouch, insert it in the rifle, jack a round into the chamber, and move the safety off, and then aim his weapon was enough time for the car bomber to gain speed and bypass the sentry post. Someone in our military wrote that policy, and that person — in my opinion — is directly responsible for the deaths of those Marines.
Our military never engaged in a direct retaliation for that bombing. Nor have we ever caught the planners responsible for it, and put them on trial. In any tyrannical culture, signs of weakness are exploited. We were perceived as weak by the Islamists, and we have paid in blood many times for it. (Some modern pundits think that Islamist terrorism began in 1983 in Beirut. Some think it began in 1979 in Tehran. Some think it began in 1972 in Munich. I think that one would have to look a few hundred years prior to the fire-bombing of the Chapel of Saint James in 1925 to find the beginning of Islamist terrorism.) No matter when the wave of terror began, we need to put an end to it.
So, never mind the debates about what we should eat for Christmas. I hope that the government of Belgium will decide to serve up some swift justice.
