Islamic State's Designs on Rome Refute Obama's Claims

 

IBDEditorials.com

It's 622 miles from Tripoli to Rome, less than the distance between New York and Charlotte, N.C. So when the Islamic State beheads 21 Coptic Christians on a beach on the other side of the Mediterranean, it should be no surprise to hear Italy's defense minister take the threat seriously. Or to find the Eternal City beefing up security.

The Libyan terrorist group Ansar Al Sharia, responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, is now in partnership with IS.

The IS video of the Libyan carnage was titled "A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross." In it, IS promises, "we will conquer Rome." Last October, the cover of an IS publication featured a Photoshopped picture of its black flag flying above St. Peter's Square.

Why Rome? St. Peter and the early Christians used the empire's famed roads to evangelize.

Muslims first attacked Sicily just two decades after Muhammad's death, led by the Caliph of Syria.

If Iran, the world's chief terror client state, went nuclear — as U.S. negotiators seem set on letting them — this cradle of Western civilization's political power becomes Europe's most enticing target for atomic jihadists.

President Obama may complain of "overinflating (IS's) importance and suggesting in some fashion that they are an existential threat to the United States or the world order," but IS seeks global conquest at least as much as the Soviet Union did. And it is recruiting tens of thousands, according to U.S. intelligence.

Defeating terrorists with global ambitions requires a full-fledged global war on terror, not "a surgical, precise response to a very specific problem," as the president deems preferable.