It’s Brussels now.
Dozens dead, and some 230 wounded at last count. More dismembered bodies and splattered blood. More Euro-jihad.
Deadly terrorist attacks occurred yesterday morning, with two explosions at the city’s international airport about 8:00 a.m. and a third in the Maelbeek metro station shortly later, a jihadist piece orchestrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Brussels follows on Paris and San Bernardino.
This carnage comes when migration and the issue of national self-preservation are already changing the political picture in Europe, as they have in the United States.
Last year the continent welcomed some 1.3 million asylum seekers. The official number keeps rising. These migrants came to Europe uninvited and largely undocumented. Now Europe faces a second wave of migrants in coming months when warmer weather encourages more arrivals.
The great majority were Muslims of uncertain provenance and few skills — mostly single men between from 15 to 40 — many fleeing internecine conflicts and conscription. As in other cities, Brussels’ roiling Muslim population — some of it native-born and some of it newly arrived — clusters unhappily in insular, no-go slums. It does not plan on going home. There is quite likely no home to go to.
To be sure, the misery that many émigrés face is heart-rending. The pain has been amply documented in hundreds of photo essays. Amid the sad-eyed women and children used to spin emotions, however, we notice determined, aggressive men are moving across borders and landscapes with a degree of impunity that gives off the vibes of a conquering army, not of weary refugees desperate for a safe haven.
For their part, EU luminaries in Brussels and Strasbourg seem unable to realize what they have set in motion. Europe’s insecurity and social costs — not only in goods and services but also in wariness, trust, concordance, and security — are incalculable and rising.
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel adheres to an open-door policy for migrants, rejecting any limit on the number of refugees allowed into her country. While dissident Germans expressed their vexations in recent state elections, Merkel still has broad-based domestic support. There are several theories behind Merkel’s inconsistent, cryptic pronouncements. Commenting on her plan, Merkel, a trained scientist, said last month: “It’s all well thought through. It’s logical.”
But it’s not. Her thinking is full of holes, gummed up by fuzzy universalism, German angst, and pan-European anti-nationalism.
The laxity of the Greek government — while playing the victim — has compounded the problem. Greek animus over German demands to clean up its fiscal collapse persists. Now, as border defenses in southeast Europe grow tighter, Greece faces thousands of bottled-up migrants in a bad state of mind, creating camps on the Macedonian border not unlike those in Calais, France.
How many times must it be observed, as have John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Bernard Lewis, and Samuel P. Huntington in the past, dealing with Islam is tricky?
Separation of church and state strikes most Muslims as absurd or unholy. Islam does not generally like the other. There is no desire or intention to assimilate or tolerate new cultures. Jihadists wish to conquer the world, by carnage and terror if necessary, and Western progressives don’t want to hear of it.
The Western allies and EU have every reason to assist Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, which are all shouldering vast burdens, with genuine refugees uprooted in Syria’s self-immolation. The $3.2 billion EU deal with Turkey last November was arguably not enough, even though Turkey to date shows few signs of really helping cure the migrant-smuggling mess.
In recent years the U.S. and its allies have tried and failed to stabilize the treacherous Middle East. Europe and the U.S. are in part culpable for the stream of displaced persons in the first place. A steady supply of cheap oil and protection of Israel comprise the grand strategy of U.S. policy in the Mideast. Obama walked away from Iraq and helped destabilize Syria. Whatever Iran does with nuclear force, its hand is in the fire.
According to Jim Yardley of the New York Times, the European Union’s latest refugee deal with Turkey includes “a blunt attempt to create a disincentive for refugees to pay smugglers to reach Greece.” Those landing in Greece “would be deported back to Turkey and placed at the back of a waiting list to legally seek asylum in Europe. For every refugee deported from Greece, an eligible Syrian waiting in a Turkish refugee camp would be allowed to seek asylum in the European Union.”
Sounds iffy. Asks Yardley: “The question is whether it will work, and whether it is legal.” The agreement seems to be failing already, and the Greek islands are in chaos, according to the UK Telegraph. Meanwhile, accusations of Islamophobia — still institutional Kryptonite in Europe and the U.S. — continue to shut down sound counter-terrorism policy and critical thought about jihad.
Maelbeek foreshadows further discord. A clash of civilizations is not going away, and we can expect more ghastly incidents to come.
