Three years before Sept. 11, Peggy Noonan practically predicted the very tragedy that was to unfold. In a Forbes magazine story titled “There is No Time, There Will Be Time,” published in the fall of 1998, she lamented that a terrorist attack was going to occur in New York or Washington D.C. Our elected officials knew it was bound to happen. None of them, though, had the courage to do anything about it.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacked. On Sept. 12, our government finally acted.
In June 2014, the recently retired Deputy Director of the CIA told a spellbound audience that the single biggest threat to the security of the west was the ISIS insurgency that was spreading across two continents, encompassing parts of Nigeria, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the world’s response was far from adequate.
It took a terrorist attack in Paris a week and a half ago to get the French President to declare war on ISIS a year and a half later.
There are other risks … far more cataclysmic than those presented by a handful of suicide bombers.
In June 2006, at a time when North Korea was preparing to test a long range ballistic missile, Ashton Carter, our current Secretary of Defense, along with former Secretary of Defense William Perry, jointly authored an op-ed that recommended the Bush administration, if necessary, “strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.”
They wrote that while there were risks in taking out the missile, the risk of not doing so would be far greater. It would lead to “more and more warheads atop more and more missiles.”
To recap: Our elected officials knew we faced terrorist threats and did little…until after we were attacked, when, along with other things, they set up the office of Homeland Security. France knew that they faced terrorist attacks from ISIS and did very little…until after they were attacked, when they declared war.
Nine years ago our Secretary of Defense warned that a nuclear-armed North Korea would present a grave threat to the United States.
The difference with this threat, of course, is if our leaders get it wrong again, and continue to wait until after to react to the foreseeable North Korean threat, we lose a lot more than two buildings and thousands of lives.
The lesson of Paris is not just to destroy ISIS.
The main lesson of Paris is for our leaders, this time, to actually lead. Keep us safe. I hope you agree.
Mr. Bloomfield, a former candidate for Congress, may be contacted bill@billbloomfieldind.com
