• COMMENTARY •


Inaction led to the events of 9/11. Peter King explains that we need to put aside political correctness in favor of a proactive defense.


I BY REP. PETER KING


n recent months, Islamist terrorists have murdered innocents in Brussels,


Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris, and Islamist plots are being uncovered throughout Europe. At home, we have had, during the Obama administration, attempted bombings over Detroit and in Times Square, shootings in Little Rock and Fort Hood, and bombings in Boston. Al-Qaida allies and afiliates


in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and Chechnya — including ISIS and AQAP — inspired or ordered these acts. Rather than just send


foreign killers to the West, as on 9/11, Islamists now use our nation’s own citizens against us.


The United States, the British Commonwealth, and Europe now face uniquely dangerous security threats from Islamists returning from fighting alongside al-Qaida in Iraq and Syria. Instead of leaning into the


problem, this administration and many congressional Democrats lean back. Eric Holder’s Justice


Department and Dianne Feinstein’s Senate Intelligence Committee spent six years and tens of millions of dollars investigating the CIA for waterboarding three al-Qaida members, which happened a dozen years ago. The agency can no longer


rely on a president’s orders and an attorney general’s


50 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2015


or pledging allegiance to ISIS after reading online propaganda, is more than we can physically surveil. And the list of foreign


countries with terrorists who may threaten the United States is expanding, to include Somalia and Nigeria. The French reportedly


FIGHTING TERRORISM Rep. Peter King in Iraq 2007 meeting with our troops.


legal opinions from one administration to another. This increases risk-aversion when we need the CIA to be aggressive. This left-wing witch hunt


needs to stop. The demonization of the


CIA is part of a broader liberal effort to treat al-Qaida as a criminal organization, and not the wartime enemy that it is. If it were up to Obama’s


lawyers, Guantanamo would close. Its detainees would be brought to America and given constitutional rights like U.S. citizens charged with common crimes. Federal prosecutors are good men and women who do great work. But al- Qaida members captured on foreign battlefields need to be aggressively interrogated


for intelligence, detained for the duration of hostilities, and tried by military tribunals for war crimes. Unlawful enemy


combatants do not deserve the opportunity to cause security nightmares in our cities, and to turn our courtrooms into theaters for propaganda.


Along with the attempt


to treat 9/11 ringleaders as ordinary criminals, there is a parallel effort to restrict surveillance of at-large terrorists. Lawful, valuable NSA programs exposed by the defector Edward Snowden were then curtailed by this administration.


The number of Islamist


radicals returning to the West from fighting overseas,


stopped monitoring the Kouachi brothers’ communications six months before their attack on a Paris magazine, and did not stop their associates’ attacks on police and on Jews at a kosher grocery. Now more than ever, we need to monitor terrorist communications. We have to expect that an attack will be perpetrated in the United States by terrorists like the Kouachis. When that happens, a share of the blame will belong to Snowden, his co- conspirator Glenn Greenwald, and elements of the media who disclosed NSA methods of intercepting terrorist communications. Before 9/11 the Clinton


administration indicted Osama bin Laden. But the government did little else, while for years al- Qaida stepped up attacks on American servicemen and embassies until finally hijackers murdered 3,000 in the U.S. homeland. We must not return to that


mindset. And we must identify by name the threat we face. Islamists are waging war


against us. We did not begin this conflict, but we must fight back to defend our homes,


COURTESY OF REP. PETER KING


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