Massacre in Paris

 

WashingtonTimes.com

People gather outside the French Consulate in Toronto on Wednesday Jan. 7, 2015 in response to the shootings earlier in the day at Charlie Hebdo Magazine in Paris. The writing on the signs reads “I am Charlie.” (AP Photo)

The boldness and the brutality of the Islamist terrorists know no bounds, and neither, until now, has the reluctance of the West to confront evil in whatever guise it presents itself.

The attack Wednesday on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo opened a new chapter in the continuing assault on simple decency and humanity in the name of Islam. The terrorists in Paris demonstrated their manly courage with the murder of a dozen unarmed journalists and the slaying of a wounded policeman, lying prostrate in the street, begging in vain for his life.

The reaction of leaders in the West was swift and they said all the expected right things, and with a vehemence often missing. Prime Minister David Cameron of Great Britain and President Francois Hollande of France condemned the attack for what it was, an attempt to silence the voices of the free. Mr. Cameron said Britain would “stand with the French people in the fight against terror and [in] defending the freedom of the press.” Mr. Hollande said “no barbaric act will ever extinguish freedom of the press. We are a united country that acts as one.” Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin sent eloquent condolences.

Even the Arab League made sympathetic noises, more or less, but with a rebuke restrained and equivocal, that the League “does not approve of violence even if it was in response to an offense committed against sacred Muslim sentiments.”

And, of course, President Obama. He first sent Josh Earnest, his press spokesman, out to say the usual timid things about bad behavior. Mr. Earnest pointedly declined to say the attack was “terrorism,” though everyone else in the world could see clearly that it was. After he read the eloquent denunciations of other world leaders, Mr. Obama joined them to “strongly condemn the horrific shooting,” but nowhere in these remarks about “universal values” and a tribute to “the great city” of Paris, was the word “terrorism.” Mr. Obama wouldn’t use the word to describe an Islamist’s murder of American soldiers at Fort Hood, preferring to call it “workplace violence,” so no one could have been surprised.

The strong words, joined in by Queen Elizabeth II and others, are welcome, but Islamist terrorists are not frightened by mere words describing the horror felt in the West. These barbarians will not stop their depredations until they are all dead.

The only good news of the day was the disclosure by French police that they have identified three suspects, whom they say are linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. This appears to confirm the boast of the gunmen who cried out in the midst of their bloody work that they were from “al Qaeda in Yemen.” The French police, who have a reputation for efficiency, are likely soon to have the men, aged 34, 32 and 18, in custody to “assist in the investigation.”

Freedom of the press, and the accompanying freedom of everyone to say what he thinks, does not come with a constitutional guarantee anywhere but in America. Even in Britain, whence came the original political inspirations of free men, there is no First Amendment. Free speech, in voice and in print, threatens distorted Islam, which has declared war on the West. Free men ignore this inconvenient truth at their peril.

The White House had earlier rebuked Charlie Hebdo for its “poor judgment,” and that misses the point by a mile. Freedom of speech is not a guarantee of nice or tasteful speech, but a guarantee of free speech. The Europeans are beginning to understand this, and so must the president and his men if freedom endures.