ISIS takes responsibility for machete attack in Belgium that wounded two police officers.

Police stand guard outside of a police station after the attack in Charleroi, Belgium. Reuters. 

ISIS has taken responsibility for a machete attack in Charleroi, Belgium that injured two female police officers. Reuters. ISIS's Amaq news agency took credit for the attack shortly after the suspect was identified as a 33 year old Algerian man with the initials of K.B. The man had shouted "Allah Akbar" before slashing the police officers. He was then shot and killed by a third cop. Prosecutors said that the man was known to the police due to criminal conduct unrelated to terrorism, but they also mentioned terrorism as a probable motive. 

My Comment:

Looks like another lone wolf terrorist attack by a new arrival in Europe. Such attacks are becoming depressingly common in Europe these days. Indeed, many of the attacks in the past month or so have fit the same pattern of a lone wolf striking out against targets with whatever weapon they have on hand. These attacks are happening somewhere between weekly and daily now and show no sign of slowing down. Belgium is just the latest victim following attacks in Germany, France and Great Britain. 

This attack was rather foolish. If there is anyone that is the definition of a hard target it would be a police officer. The only person that would be more likely to fight back is a trained solider. It is not surprising at all that this attack ended with only a couple of police officers injured and the suspect dead. Though it seems he caught two police officers off guard (and knowing Europe, they may not have been armed), it was always going to end with him either being shot or incapacitated and arrested before too much damage was done. Not to downplay what happened to the two officers, but this attack could have been much worse if the terrorist actually used his brain. 

Again, we are helped by the fact that many terrorists are rather stupid, dysfunctional individuals. A smart terrorist would have picked an easier target then the police. Ideally, from their point of view, they would have hit a place where there isn't anyone likely to fight back and where they could kill undisturbed for some time. We have seen that tactic work even with people armed only with knives before. But when you attack cops you guarantee a quick, armed police response. 

Of course ISIS is to blame for this tactic. They told their followers to specifically target police and soldiers. I guess I understand the idea in theory. They think by attacking the people that protect civilians they can show to the civilians that anyone is vulnerable. Even the people that are supposed to keep you safe. That's the theory at least, but I think that killing ten civilians is more terrifying then wounding two police officers. 

One thing that caught my eye with this story is the fact that the suspect was known to the police. He was also a recent arrival, since he was only living in Belgium since 2012. Though I have no information on the man's immigration status, my question is this: If the man was known to the police for being a criminal, why on earth was he still in the country? Why not deport him? I guess it is possible he was a citizen, but if he wasn't then there was no reason for him to be in Belgium or even Europe. 

Europe has always been reluctant to deport people even when it makes a lot of sense to do so. To be fair, America has the same problem as well, and I think it's for the same politically correct reasons. If you kick out criminals people on the left will get mad at you for being racist and breaking up families. Even if those criminals go on to kill innocent people. Somehow it is better to let innocent people die then to be slightly mean to criminals who have made a mockery of the generosity of the host countries. 

And it's not like this is a surprise. ISIS is specifically targeting these kinds of people for these lone wolf attacks. When they can get in direct contact with them, and they have a criminal record, they don't accept them into the ranks in Syria and Iraq. Instead they send them back to Europe and say "hey, use your criminal contacts to get a weapon and go on a rampage". Everyone knows ISIS is doing this but even still the thought of actually deporting criminals that could be targeted for recruitment by ISIS is considered hate speech and could even get you locked up if you suggest it in Europe. 

This attitude is why ISIS is winning. Sure they are losing territory, but by any metric, they are the most successful terrorist group that is active right now by several orders of magnitude. They win because they use our political correctness against us. We won't reduce their recruitment pool because doing so would be "racist" and "mean". Like it is somehow a bad thing to punish criminals... 

I fully expect more attacks like this in the future and at this point I would not be surprised if I have another post up about an ISIS terror attack by this time next week. Hell, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if there was a post up tomorrow about a terror attack. ISIS is on a roll right now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon...