The sun had not yet begun to creep up over the horizon Tuesday morning when Americans awoke to the horrific news of carnage in Belgium after a series of Islamic terrorist attacks rocked the city of Brussels.

Jihadis using firearms and suicide bombs killed nearly three dozen and wounded more than 200 in the deadliest terrorist attacks in Europe since last November, when Islamic terrorists killed 129 and wounded hundreds more in attacks in Paris. Though not yet confirmed by Belgian authorities, there is speculation that Tuesday’s terrorist attacks were in response to last Friday’s capture of terrorist leader Salah Abdeslam, wanted in connection with the Paris attacks. The Islamic State issued a statement saying that the attacks against Belgium are the result of the nation’s participation “in the international coalition against the Islamic State,” and further threatening, “What will be coming is worse.”

On the other hand, though a relatively small nation, Belgium is home to the largest per-capita number of citizens who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. And Abdeslam had help in evading authorities from many people in Muslim enclaves. Yet Belgium remains on the list of nations from which travelers don’t need a visa to enter the U.S. through the Visa Waiver Program. That is astounding and it must be corrected immediately.

Reminiscent of the proclamations following the Paris attacks, the initial statements from Western leaders following the Brussels attacks were as predictable as they were frustrating and insipid. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called the attacks “a dark time for our country,” adding, “More than ever, I call on everybody to show calm, but also solidarity.”

Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, said, “This is a cowardly attack, an attack on our values and on our open societies. Terrorism will not defeat democracy and take away our freedoms.”

French President Francois Hollande tweeted, “I express my solidarity with the Belgian people. Through the Brussels attacks, the whole of Europe has been hit.”

The “leading from behind” leader of the free world took time away from prostrating himself before the lecturing of communist Cuba’s diminutive dictator, Raul Castro, long enough to proclaim: “This is yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” A lovely and meaningless platitude, but we suppose we should be grateful that Barack Obama didn’t use the moment as an opportunity to again lecture us on the dangers of global warming or on the sins of American imperialism and the medieval Crusades.

Obama spent less than one minute of his speech from Cuba discussing the Brussels attacks — less time than he spent doing the wave with the Cuban dictator while watching the Cuban national baseball team.

On a related note, Obama ordered flags at half mast almost immediately — something he waited five days to do after the jihadi attack in Chattanooga.

Showing that not everyone has lost their minds to politically correct orthodoxy, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz reiterated his position that there should be no attempts to bring in Syrian refugees to the U.S. following these latest Islamic terrorist attacks, stating that the U.S. program to vet Muslim refugees is “woefully inadequate.” He also called for a more robust response from Obama than just “another lecture on Islamophobia.” Unsurprisingly, Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton called Cruz’s comments “unhelpful.”

Following the Paris attacks, French PM Hollande vowed to be “merciless” in the fight against terrorism, calling those attacks “a horror,” “an act of war,” and attacks “against us all.” A joint statement by leaders of the European Union declared that the EU would “face this threat together with all necessary means and ruthless determination … to defeat extremism, terrorism, and hatred.” After Paris, Obama likewise promised to do all that was needed to combat the Islamic State; ironic, since he’d stated only hours earlier that his administration’s efforts had “contained” that jihadi threat.

Writing in his book, “The Life of Reason, Vol. 1,” philosopher George Santayana opined, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. … [W]hen experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. … This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”

Worse than infants, modern “progressive” leaders in Western society not only have failed to learn the brutal lessons taught by several decades of relentless Islamic extremism, which openly seeks nothing less than the destruction and subjugation of Western society, they openly rebuke the obvious truths which their eyes reveal. As a result, thousands of their citizens are dead. Rather than declare Islamic extremism as the evil that it is, they wring their hands and engage in a form of twisted group therapy to try and discover why the attacks are really the fault of the West.

Without an awakening, and an undaunted determination to crush the evil of Islamic extremism, thousands more will die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in the years to come. The blood of those victims will be on the hands of those leaders who chose the path of willful ignorance and the appeasement of evil.