The Patriot Post® · Remember the Global Threat of Terror

First, good news: After a months-long manhunt, Belgian law enforcement captured alleged Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam in a neighborhood of Brussels on Friday. It was a blow to the Islamic State, as it disrupts the group’s plans. Abdeslam said he was planning another attack. Now he’s a mine of intelligence that interrogators hope to exploit. However, the fact that Abdeslam evaded capture for months shows the extent of the network in Belgium sympathetic to violent jihad.

Make no mistake: The tentacles of that network reach into the United States. Late last week, the FBI finally announced the 18-year-old who was killed by police after stabbing four people on the Merced campus of the University of California was inspired by the Islamic State. Faisal Mohammad carried out a terrorist attack Nov. 4, 2015, despite the stubborn insistence of California law enforcement to the contrary.

This wasn’t the only example of political correctness being destroyed by stark reality over the last few days. The city of Östersund, Sweden, canceled its earth hour celebration over worries that turning off the lights for one hour on Mar. 18 would have encouraged sexual assaults from Muslim migrants.

Back in the Middle East, the violence continues and even grows. The Islamic State bombed one of Turkey’s most popular shopping areas Sunday and, the day before, a U.S. Marine was killed during a skirmish with the terror group. He is officially the first American combat death in fighting with the Islamic State. “There is no safe place in Iraq,” said Najim Abdullah al-Jabouri, an Iraqi general. “Even the Green Zone in Baghdad, which houses the U.S. Embassy, is being targeted by rockets.” Indeed, we must destroy the nexus of terror before it grows so much that the U.S. becomes the site of a Paris-like mass terror attack by a group the commander in chief still treats as the JV team.