Another brutal weekend of violence has laid bare a reality the left refuses to face: Islamist extremism is still killing innocent people around the world and even Americans are paying the price. From a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney to a lecture hall at Brown University and a deadly ambush in Palmyra, the scenes were heartbreaking and predictable to anyone paying attention to the pattern of jihadist violence.
In Sydney’s Bondi Beach massacre, authorities found Islamic State flags in the attackers’ vehicle and have labeled the slaughter at a Hanukkah event an ISIS-inspired terrorist act that killed scores of civilians. This was not a random outburst of gun violence; it was a targeted, ideologically motivated massacre aimed at Jews celebrating their faith — and it demands a national and global response that names the enemy for what it is.
On the same weekend, American forces were struck in Syria when a convoy was ambushed in Palmyra, killing U.S. soldiers and an American interpreter while wounding others. These were not accidental casualties of a bygone war — they were killed by an ISIS-linked attacker while carrying out counterterrorism work, which proves the jihadi threat is still active and lethal in the field.
At home, the Brown University massacre that left students dead and many more wounded showed how vulnerable our campuses and communities remain to violent ideologies and hateful actors who pick soft targets. While investigators still hunt the suspect and motives, the blood on the classroom floor forces us to confront how broken the culture of campus security and social responsibility has become under leaders who prioritize political correctness over protecting students.
Conservative commentators and veterans are right to demand that America stop playing defense with moral equivocations and hesitancy; we need decisive pressure on terrorist networks and the regimes that enable them. News outlets and politicians who obsess over gun control and ritual declarations while ignoring ideological drivers of terror are failing the public — it’s time for leaders to get serious about striking safe havens and choking off ISIS’s ability to inspire and train killers.
Make no mistake: analysts are warning that, even after territorial defeats, ISIS’s propaganda and franchise-style attacks continue to metastasize and pose a global danger, which means half-measures won’t do. Our response should be ruthless in intelligence and surgical in force — dismantle networks, disrupt financing, and work with reliable regional partners rather than lecturing our way out of danger.
If you’re tired of watching elected officials and media elites wring their hands while communities suffer, then it’s time to demand action: secure our borders, tighten vetting, sharpen military pressure where terrorists hide, and stop giving soft cover to political narratives that refuse to call out Islamist extremism. We owe it to the victims in Sydney, Providence, and Palmyra to back our troops, honor the fallen with real policy, and finally put national security ahead of woke optics.
