The terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, United Kingdom, is another tragic and devastating attack on innocent civilians. According to CNN, this attack is the deadliest attack on British soil since the 2005 London Bombings, with 22 people reported dead, including an 8-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman, and 59 others injured.
This attack only comes days after President Trump addressed the Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia, where in his speech he said, “If we do not act against this organized terror, then we know what will happen. Terrorism's devastation of life will continue to spread. Peaceful societies will become engulfed by violence. And the futures of many generations will be sadly squandered.” So this begs the question, have we done enough in the past 16 years since the 9/11 attacks to end terrorism? The answer is no, we haven’t. We have forgotten the tragic events of 9/11, which left over 2,000 people dead from not just America but all over the world. We have forgotten the true enemy, not Islam, but Radical Islamic terrorism.
The people of the United States and the world have stopped combating terrorism and have created a politically correct society in which extremism can thrive. We have become too afraid to address radical terrorism by its name because we are afraid of offending all Muslims. I am not saying that we should blame all Muslims for the actions of the radicalized extremists. That would be extremely wrong; in fact, I encourage peace-loving Muslims to help in the fight against extremists. We need to come to the realization that this extremism will not just disappear if we leave it alone, it will only grow stronger.
The first thing we need to do is end the policy of open borders. I am not saying we need to end immigration, what I am saying is that we need to be more careful with who we are taking in. A society cannot sustain itself if it has unchecked immigration. We have seen this in Europe, as since the escalation of the refugee crisis, we have in fact seen a rise in radical Islamic terrorist attacks. These attacks have for the most part been carried out by individuals who were radicalized before they reached the shores of Europe.
For example, the attack on Paris in 2015 was carried out by 6 North African men who were able to enter France without issue due to the open border policy of the European Union. Another example of the failure of open border policy is the Brussels attacks of 2016, where 32 people were killed after three suicide bombers detonated bombs in the Brussels airport. The three bombers and their accomplices were found to have entered the country through the open border policy, even though they were radicalized members of the terror group ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. If the open border policy was not in effect, and there were stricter immigration laws in place, those attackers would have been apprehended before they entered the country or not allowed in at all.
The next step is to have a worldwide military coalition, which will go into nations with radicalized terrorists and destroy any trace of these groups existence. The United States has the best intelligence in the world, we need to use it to pinpoint where these radicalized fighters are and destroy them before they can become a threat to their own nations and abroad. Far too many people have died under the weight of Islamic extremist terrorism for us to turn away and ignore it.
Every year on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, we are met with the staunch and solemn slogan “Never Forget”. In recent years, it seems this nation has forgotten the death and destruction which was caused on that morning. We have lost our appetite for righteousness and we instead give terrorists the same treatment we give our neighbors. I do not favor war, but I do favor justice and security. We must secure peace through strength, which means to fix the problem we must first address the problem.
