Dozens murdered by terrorists in Brussels this morning. From the NYT:
Since the Paris attacks, security experts have warned that Europe was likely to face additional assaults by the Islamic State and by other terrorist groups. The Paris attacks showed that the scale and sophistication of the Islamic State’s efforts to carry out operations in Europe were greater than first believed, and analysts have also pointed to Europe’s particular vulnerabilities. They include the huge flow of undocumented migrants to the Continent from the Middle East last year, the movement of European citizens between their home countries and Syria to fight with the Islamic State, and persistent problems with intelligence sharing among European countries and even between competing security agencies in some nations.
Few countries have been more vulnerable than Belgium. It has an especially high proportion of citizens who have traveled to Iraq, insular Muslim communities that have helped shield jihadists, and security services that have had persistent problems conducting effective counterterrorism operations, not least in its four-month effort to capture Mr. Abdeslam.
If the Islamic terrorists can pull this off in the heart of a European capital that is already expecting something like this (as they must have been after the arrest of Abdeslam, is anywhere in Europe safe?
Good luck pressing on with that open door to Middle East refugee migration, Chancellor Merkel. The future belongs to leaders like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who gave a powerful speech a week ago today, on Hungary’s national holiday Here it is, with English subtitles; a bit of the transcript follows:
The main danger to Europe’s future does not come from those who want to come here, but from Brussels’ fanatical internationalism. [Note: By “Brussels,” he means the European Union. — RD] We should not allow Brussels to place itself above the law. We shall not allow it to force upon us the bitter fruit of its cosmopolitan immigration policy. We shall not import to Hungary crime, terrorism, homophobia and synagogue-burning anti-Semitism. There shall be no urban districts beyond the reach of the law, there shall be no mass disorder. No immigrant riots here, and there shall be no gangs hunting down our women and daughters. We shall not allow others to tell us whom we can let into our home and country, whom we will live alongside, and with whom we will share our country.
We know how these things go. First we allow them to tell us whom we must take in,
then they force us to serve foreigners in our own country. In the end we find ourselves being told to pack up and leave our own land.Therefore we reject the forced resettlement scheme, and we shall tolerate neither blackmail, nor threats.
The time has come to ring the warning bell. The time has come for opposition and resistance.
The entire transcript can be read at Gates of Vienna.
To be clear, we don’t know whether the terrorists who did this were home-grown or came with the migrating masses. That’s not the point. The point is that Europe is already full of alienated, militant young Muslim men — and European leaders are importing more and more of them by the day. This is not going to end well for Europe. Hungary, it will be fine. [UPDATE: Let me revise that opinion in light of the fact that Hungary’s fertility rate is absolutely cratering. — RD]
UPDATE: From BuzzFeed News’s reporter in Belgium:
One Belgian counterterrorism official told BuzzFeed News last week that due to the small size of the Belgian government and the huge numbers of open investigations — into Belgian citizens suspected of either joining ISIS, being part of radical groups in Belgium, and the ongoing investigations into last November’s attacks in Paris, which appeared to be at least partially planned in Brussels and saw the participation of several Belgian citizens and residents — virtually every police detective and military intelligence officer in the country was focused on international jihadi investigations.
“We just don’t have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said.
“It’s literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it’s very grave.”
UPDATE.2: A reader in the UK writes:
Brace yourself for the familiar refrain from our dear leaders:
‘Shocked’ by these horrific, totally unexpected attacks
Je suis bruxellois
Islam is a Religion of Peace
Nothing to Do with Islam
Nothing to do with mass Islamic immigration
Racist to second-guess Frau Merkel’s policies
Only a tiny minority
Large peaceful majority expecting backlash from the Far Right
Special precautions to protect mosques, madrassas etc.
Further restrictions on ‘hate speech’ which causes these attacks
We are safer in the EU than out
Diversity is strength
War is peace
Freedom is slavery