I watched the news and read the alerts as they hit my iPad throughout the day, and I sensed disappointment when the terrorist in New Orleans turned out to be a U.S. citizen. It is much easier to get angry at these senseless incidents when the villain is an outsider. When the person who pulls the trigger or steers the car is one of our own, it is impossible to rationalize the maniacal act. The ISIS flag in the vehicle is evidence of a failure of society to allow an American to be radicalized into a terrorist group and kill innocent people, doing nothing but coming together and celebrating the New Year.
In a press conference on Wednesday morning, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the incident as a “terrorist attack,” urging residents to stay away from the area as it was still an active scene. The FBI, however, said it was not clear that it was a terrorist event but that an improvised explosive device was found with the suspect. A man drives a vehicle into a crowd of people, opens gunfire on police, and has an IED in his car. What else can it be but terrorism? The FBI facing reality will go far toward restoring its credibility.
At this point, we should not expect any better from Joe Biden, but for his team to allow him to address the country with his New Year’s message and not include mention of the NOLA tragedy’s victims, including his condolences to the victim’s families on behalf of our nation, is in itself a tragedy. The heinous individual did not cross our border, but this president allowed unknown thousands of gang members who are looking to prey on weak individuals to increase their ranks. We know of at least 99 individuals who are on our terrorist watch list who violated our border and somewhere in America.
The FBI must share responsibility for this incident. Whenever we have to stop and grieve for a mass killing, we listen to press conferences about what will now be done to prevent such an occurrence from happening again. After is too late. We have the technology and resources to anticipate these acts and put the steps in place to stop them before they happen preemptively. We need to be more innovative and more resourceful than the damaged people who choose to do us harm. We do not need to see a sheriff, mayor, or governor at a microphone surrounded by nameless support staff to tell us what happened. We need to know what didn’t happen so we can begin to feel safe in our land.
It is way past time to reconsider our priorities regarding keeping America safe. We absolutely need to discuss how we can recognize the signs of someone who is in danger of committing a heinous act, but more importantly, we need to get the scum of the earth out of public contact. When someone commits a crime, they do not deserve to be released to repeat it. We are housing, feeding, clothing, medicating, and educating unvetted individuals who broke the law the moment they violated our border. That money needs to be directed at who we let into our country and keeping Americans safe.
We need to stop investigating parents who speak up at school board meetings or Catholics attending weekly services and spend these resources ridding our streets of gangs, cartels, and known offenders. We have no problem inconveniencing innocent people who just want to go to dinner or a play, attend a concert or sporting event, or fly a plane. It is now time to inconvenience people who want to do us harm by either returning them to the foreign prison they left to come here or to one of our prisons. It is time to get these people out of the public so the public can go about their lives free of fear.
