‘We are at war,” said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls after the terror attacks in Belgium — even before ISIS claimed responsibility.
By “we,” he meant all of Europe: Brussels, site of the bombings that killed dozens and wounded hundreds more, is the seat of the European Union bureaucracy. Indeed, the subway bomb hit a station that serves multiple EU offices.
Yet Brussels is also, in the words of a former US counterterrorism expert, “the Ground Zero of European jihadism” — the home of the largest, most radicalized Muslim enclave. Belgium also has Europe’s highest proportion of citizens who’ve traveled to Syria and Iraq.
And Brussels’ Molenbeek ghetto is a safe haven for Islamist terrorists. It’s where last November’s deadly Paris attacks were likely planned — and where Salah Abdeslam, suspected mastermind of the Paris slaughter, was captured last Friday along with a huge weapons cache.
In the intervening four months, officials say, Abdeslam built a new, well-armed jihadi network. Yet Belgian security forces seemed woefully unprepared Tuesday, despite heightened terror alerts.
Even if Europe’s leaders now understand the situation, are they prepared to truly fight the war that Valls describes?
They certainly can’t look to Washington for effective leadership. President Obama gave a brief statement of support for the Belgian people Tuesday — then headed off to a baseball game in Havana, where he happily joined in the wave.
Yet no one doubts this nation is in the crosshairs, too.
Some take the threat seriously: The NYPD significantly upped its anti-terror forces after Paris, as Police Commissioner Bill Bratton noted Tuesday.
But Team Obama’s anti-ISIS approach still seems tentative. Just this week, the public learned that US ground forces in Iraq are larger than the Pentagon has admitted — yet the generals want even more, and warn that combat troops may yet prove necessary.
Nor will crushing ISIS end the threat: Other groups are sure to take up the jihadi flag.
The larger war has no end in sight — yet the West is still waking up to that bitter truth.
