A reminder that we’re at war
July 3, 2007| By Nathaniel Ward
The attempted terrorist attacks in Britain over the past week should serve as a reminder to Americans and our allies in Europe that the war on terror continues. Even with a change in government—and a troubling change in its foreign policy stance, detailed in a new Heritage paper—Britain remains a prime target for radical Islamic terrorism.
Pundits will be quick to draw “lessons” from the foiled attacks, Heritage’s James Carafano writes in The New York Post. They will propose such ineffective plans as expanded police monitoring of our streets with cameras. They will advocate impractical new restrictions to guard against car bombs. And they will push for changes in our foreign policy based on the premise “that the killers, whoever they are, wouldn’t be trying to kill us if we would just stop doing things to make them mad.”
In the end, he writes, “the right way to stop terrorist acts is simple: Stop them before they start.”
America has foiled at least 16 terror conspiracies in recent years, and this was accomplished not with symbolic measures but “the old-fashioned way,” Carafano writes. It was accomplished “through good counterterrorism investigations involving undercover operations, turning informants, trailing suspects, reading their mail [and] listening to their phone calls.”
Unfortunately, the attempted attacks in London and Glasgow could be the first of many similar trials for Gordon Brown, the new prime minister. Heritage foreign policy expert Nile Gardiner explains that “the Al-Qaeda network and its allies will seek to test the strength and resolve of the new British government.” This they will do through a campaign of intimidation as they push Britain “into withdrawing from Iraq and scaling down [their] close alliance with the United States.”
If it is to prevail, Gardiner argues, Britain must battle the extremists at home even as it fights overseas.
“The war must be taken to the enemy, including state sponsors of international terror,” he writes. “Britain must fight this war in conjunction with its closest ally, the United States, sending a clear message that the West will not be divided in the defense of freedom.”
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
